Home Hacking Projects for Geeks (Hacks)

Rating:
Summary: I won't pretend that I wasn't disappointed
Review: A better title for this might be "Introduction to X10 Technologies," because that's all it was. That being said, I learned many interesting things about X10, from an end user's perspective. Frankly, before I bought this book, I didn't even know that X10 was a protocol, and not a product. (You've seen all those X10 camera links on the web.) But, to pretend that you'll get many ideas from these cookie-cutter projects, or to pretend that this is a book "for geeks" is to seriuosly mislabel this book.

As I said earlier, the book on it's own merits, isn't bad. The projects are step-by-step recipes for doing things like hooking up X10 controls to light switches, motion detectors, and radios, and managing them using (downloadable, no programming knowledge is required or expected) scripts and applications in both Microsoft Windows and Linux. It's geared for the casual technophile: if you're comfortable in a conventional home electronics store, then there aren't any projects in this book that would be out of your reach.

Rating:
Summary: The Book I've Been Looking For
Review: I just got this book and I'll admit I haven't read it from cover to cover. But the problem I've run into is that I want to slowly automate my home but most of the books out there are for electricians or electrical engineers.

Which for me is no help.

But by addressing a step by step approach to most projects you can read through them and get the basics and adapt it to what you are wanting to do.

Also it is written in a very easy to understand style which I like.

For those of you wanting to get started in automating your home, I have yet to find a better place to do so than this book.

Rating:
Summary: integration
Review: The cover of the book deliberately harkens back to a retroness of some earlier decade. The 70s perhaps. The projects discussed are however of quite recent vintage. One useful improvement in this book, over earlier ones in this series, are the visual slider estimates at the start of each chapter. There are 3, for cost, time and difficulty. Gives you another handle to quickly assess what you might tackle.

Many projects revolve around integration. How to build some hardware electrical gadget and hook it up in some fashion to your computer. So that the computer can get data from it, or control it. The software components of these projects is kept very minimal. The authors are clearly aware that the likeliest readers are hands-on folks. Who might think that there's already too much software in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Great, but definitely for geeks
Review: This is the kind of book I wish I would have had as a kid. A book that sparks your imagination about how you can use hardware and software to do practical and cool things. In this case to build little home helpers, like a TiVo for radio, a home theatre IR controller, a home theatre PC, and more.

The book spends about 300 pages on thirteen home hacks. They are separated into three parts; automation, entertainment and security. Each project starts with a list of materials then walks through a very detailed explanation of building both the hardware and software.

This is definitely a book for geeks. Specifically the type of geek that finds themselves at Radio Shack more than a couple of times a month. Certainly part of the value of the book is in the projects themselves, but a lot more of the value is in it's inspirational quality.

Rating:
Summary: Even software geeks can follow these hacks...
Review: When I got back from vacation, one of the books waiting for me to review was Home Hacking Projects for Geeks by Tony Northrup and Eric Faulkner (O'Reilly). After finishing the book, I think I need to invest in some X10 devices...

Chapter List: Automate A Light; Automate Your Porch Light; Remotely Monitor A Pet; Make Your House Talk; Remotely Control Your Computer; Control Your Home Theater; Build A Windows-Based Home Theater PC; Build A Linux-Based Home Theater PC; Create Time-Shifted FM Radio; Access Your Entire Media Collection Over The Internet; Keyless Entry Welcome Home; Watch Your House Across The Network; Build A Security System; Index

Normally these types of books involve lots of soldiering and circuitry, and as a result tend to be beyond my level of expertise. I do software, not hardware as a rule. But the authors of Home Hacking Projects have written a book of clever things you can do with home automation, largely using the X10 protocol. X10 is a communications protocol like TCP/IP, only it runs over power lines and is generally used to control devices plugged into outlets. Each device has an address and can take action based on the information it sends and receives. They start with very basic stuff such as automating a light to turn on based on a motion sensor. From there, you get into some automation involving X10 and Perl scripts to allow X10 to be driven from your computer. But don't worry if you don't know Perl. The source code is included, and you can probably figure out the areas you need to tweak. The complexity builds from there, and by the end you could happily be drilling holes in walls and such. At the start of each chapter there's a cost/time/complexity estimate, and each chapter ends with a bill of materials so that you know exactly what to buy to accomplish the hack.

Nicely written, well documented, and easy to follow... I'm sure my son and I will have a few projects to keep us busy in the coming months.