Games, Diversions & Perl Culture

Chapter 5. Home Automation with MisterHouse

Bruce Winter

When most people think of Home Automation (HA), they think of “The Jetsons,” where every appliance in the house has a mind of its own and occasionally does something you want it to do. The classic image of a HA geek is a man who lives in his easy chair, controlling every aspect of his life with voice commands and buttons like you see in Figures Figure 5-1 and Figure 5-2.

Figure 5-1. MisterHouse has several Web interfaces. This one is designed for easy use with the touch screen of small Internet appliances

Figure 5-2. This part of the web interface allows you to toggle, brighten, or dim X10 modules

While this may actually be the ultimate dream of a few couch potatoes, this is not what most people want. To many people, a night alone in a smart house would be worse than a night at the Bates Motel. ^{[1] [2]}

This article shows you my take on HA, used for practical, everyday chores that even your technophobe spouse or relative might appreciate. You can do it with the computer you have today. You don’t have to be Bill Gates to afford it. And you can do it all with your favorite programing language!

HA! Perl?

So why does Perl make an excellent choice for an HA programming language? Let me count the ways:

Concise and object-oriented

HA is object-oriented ...