A Few Notes

I should have said in my initial post that I am updating this blog from New Hampshire, and the monitor is working in our home in Maryland. This means I can't post photos or check certain physical features until I actually get back there.

I left the monitor working there and have been getting information for about a month so far, so it seems pretty solid. It is set up to measure inside and outside temperatures and house power status.

A nice feature is that the monitor can be controlled and queried via email, as well as by text messages from cell phones. Sending an email to the modem number using the aaaxxxyyyy@txt.att.net format will result in a text message being sent to the modem. It will then reply, if the message contains a valid command. One feature I enabled (from here, via email) using the command 'Twit+' is to have it periodically twitter a status message with temperatures and power status. The twitter account is 'zouckhome', and if you follow it you will see the format of the periodic status reports.

I also left out that the Asus netbook runs a special net book version of puppy linux, not the linux version it came with. I boot from an SD flash chip that plugs into the net book.

I selected Tcl/Tk not only for its flexibility, core simplicity and availability on multiple platforms, but the ability to create single file executables for these platforms called starpacks, which contain in one compact form the application and library code plus the entire Tcl/Tk runtime, so you don't have to install anything but the actual executable file. This is unlike any other software I know of, including Java, and makes for simple distribution and maintenance. Jean-Claude Wippler at Jee Laboratories is responsible for developing the starkit and starpack technology. For more on this technology see http://equi4.com/starkit/  .