Adaptive Home Logic Description
Coordinate many home automation and other peripherals to establish a PC controlled home automation
AHL/3 can seamlessly coordinate many home automation and other peripherals to establish a computer controlled home automation system together with advanced features that can save time & money by automating everyday tasks, as well as improving security and energy usage by controlling lamps, appliances & HVAC automatically or remotely, making your home even more efficient, interactive, safe, welcoming & fun!
Key Features:
Easy to install, use and understand.
Advanced Event Logic
By combining multiple conditions using AND / OR / XOR / ELSE logic its now very easy and intuitive to create intelligent events that can react to more complex circumstances, negating the necessity to write scripts in all but the most complex of circumstances. In addition each event also has its own duration, repeat and (random) off-set timers.
Two-way Speech Capability
Featuring an automatic prioritised speech buffer, allowing more important messages to be spoken first. In addition each speech item can be spoken in a different voice or at a different pitch, speed or volume (personality, mood or emphasis) from sentence to sentence, where required. In addition to SAPI4 TTS voices and MS Speech Agents, the program now also supports some of the newer SAPI5 TTS voices as well. The program also has an Auto Mute feature permitting crucial safety / security messages to be spoken, whilst other non-vital messages are muted.
Screen Overlay Scene
When required the program can be operated via one or more simple or sophisticated screen overlay scenes using a mouse or touch screen, updated in real time, making it easier to be operated by others; or stay with our new improved GUI (HAL9000 style), where different information (or data streams) can be mapped to different display areas, or let it work in the background from the computer’s system tray.
Event Messages
The event messages, which provide an easy method for an event to report a change to its status, are fully user-definable to suit individual requirements, or maybe sequentially or randomly obtained from a text file, to exhibiting a less mechanical and a more interactive behaviour. Live system data can also be appended to a message to create different sensor logs. Each event message can be displayed to the screen, spoken (with adjustable priority), emailed (can be relayed as an SMS to a mobile telephone), recorded in the program’s log file or relayed over the APRS amateur radio network. A wave file can also be played to alert you to the message.
Media Player
The program now has its own intrinsic media player, allowing an event to start or stop a music file, as required. There are also many new functions to open or close a particular CD tray, flash the screen or the keyboard LED’s, etc.
X10 & UPB
The program has built-in two-way support for X10 and UPB (Universal Power Bus) power line modules, providing an easy, effective and an inexpensive solution to controlling your mains powered lighting and appliances automatically, using the existing house wiring with a minimum of fuss.
Generic Interfacing
The program has particularly strong serial and parallel generic interfacing ability, using up to 32 com ports and 26 networked data streams concurrently, together with complete (bitwise) control of the computer’s I/O address map ‡, making it possible to directly interface with most standard devices and peripherals. It also has the ability to rapidly extract data from, or embed live data into, a data stream or file.
The program also has an integrated (ASCII & Hex) terminal emulator for monitoring or testing a serial or networked device, on-the-fly.
Remote Access
The program can be securely controlled and monitored remotely by simply sending and receiving SMS messages with your mobile phone, by e-mail, using a telnet session on a remote internet-connected computer, a home network or by an APRS equipped amateur radio*, from afar. It can also be controlled directly using plain text via its Natural Language Interface.
RSS Weather Feed
Keep up to date with the very latest weather conditions and forecast for your area. The program can automatically download Yahoo’s (The Weather Channel) RSS weather feed at regular intervals, interpret and display the information in either metric or imperial units. This data is also available to the events and the VWS graphical display.
Virtual Weather Station Graphical Display
See your current weather conditions at a glance. Updated in real time, including self-adjusting inside & outside temperature bar graphs (Fahrenheit / Celsius), Wind Speed & Direction (on a compass rose) together with a Beaumont scale read out, and the atmospheric pressure trend (on a bar graph with adjustable update interval). This data can be supplied by a virtual weather station peripheral or for free via the RSS weather feed, or even a bit of both! Events can also be established to alert you to high wind speeds, etc.
RSS News Feeds (Talking News Agitator)
Stay up to date with the very latest World, National, Business or Technology News, Entertainment or Gossip by automatically downloading up to 5 different RSS news feeds. Each news feed may be displayed and or spoken.
Full Log File Reporting
The program’s log file reporting system has been completely revised to record all aspects of the program’s operation, including Driver activity, Events, Natural Language Interface, Power Line Modules, System Messages and Warnings. Log entries can now be filtered by Type, Object, Message Level and Date (with built-in calendar control to ease date selection) before being sorted by Date/Time, ID# or Message Level in either ascending or descending order before being displayed or printed, making it very easy to focus-in within a particular area of interest.
Driver Architecture
Despite having extensive communication facilities, AHL/3 sees the introduction of a comprehensive driver architecture incorporating exceptionally fast inter-process communications, providing it with almost unlimited extensibility, allowing OEM’s, third-party software developers, and your AHL team to add wide-ranging support for some of the more proprietary products and devices into your wider home automation environment.
Windows Script Host
Is supported for advanced users wishing to plug-in their own VB or Java scripts into the program to provide additional or specialist functionality.
Sun Rise / Set Times
The program is fully aware of the sun rise and set times for your area. Selectable co-ordinate data for more than 3,900 cities around the world or enter manually, automatically adjusting for Daylight Saving Time. Now also includes the Moon phase and relative brightness.
Wildcard Search Capabilities
Allows similar or related items to be easily located.