GSoC proposal : home automation

[Marco Martin]

On Thursday 24 March 2011, Marsollier Robin wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I'm preparing my proposal for GSOC and I want some feedback.
> 
> In last discussion about it, Luca Tringali proposed an integration with
> Plasma Media Center, I think it's a very good idea for long term, but for
> now, domogik is in way for its 0.10 release,  PMC is also expecting its
> first release, and my project is only ideas.

pmc really should be one of the targets, yes.

> So I think it could be preferable to devellop only bases for home
> automation with domogik in KDE for the moment, and I could do integration
> with PCM after its first release and after this summer, with all time I
> need to do it.
> 
> I drew some drafts of what could be the plasmoids, and I have for the
> moment two plasmoid : one for supervision of house in general, and one for
> supervision of a single room in the building. I will upload my drafts
> soon.

plasmoids as desktop widgetss should stay pretty tiny and basic i think, they 
however can load in a full complicated glory when loaded from a tablet for 
instance.

> I'm also thinking for a way to set up a configuration for the home, and
> since that is not an item used every day (add a room, add shutters, lamps
> or heating ...), I think it does'nt have its place in a plasmoid, so in a
> dedicated app? Probably, for my point of view.

depends if your target is to be able to control everything from a mobile, from 
lcd panels around the house, from tv etc, or if for some tasks you really have 
to sit in front of a pc

> And what type of interface should I develop for it? With an other app for
> conf, I think I couldn't use dataengine/services of Plasma ? So a kio ?

you can link to libplasma from any app
and use dataengines from everywhere, even a pure qwidget based app, if you 
fancy, however the result would be so "visual" that i'm not sure if an usual 
qwidget app has really a big place in it

> I intend to start before the official start of GSoC because I travel a few
> days in early june. It is a problem for mentors to work with me ​​before
> official start in order to give them a little break after? :D

if you can keep the overall time you working on, sure...
only thing, if you start before getting officially approved, is still not 
*sure* it will actually get approved, eh :)

> And what do you think of this? Too ambitious, not enough?

if you will be able to offer working plasmoids (i would srsly go for tablet 
form factor as a target for the most complex ones) it would be very, very good

> Presently, I'm revising my C++ (the easy part) and after, I will learn Qt,
> but I must also pass my year in the same time. I would try to join you on
> IRC this week-end (pseudo : rmrsllr), if I find time.

would be good

-- 
Marco Martin