Hack-The-Hub Prototype

These days, I ordered the first bunch of hardware for my recent home automation project. However, beside all the sensors and actors I want to put into my home, I also would like to monitor and control as much devices as possible. Therefore, I came up with a little prototype to check whether some of my devices are online or not.

Candidates for my prototype where my

• Thecus N4200PRO  (NAS)
• Lexmark Optra S 1255 (LAN-enabled laser printer)
• Canon PIXMA MG3150 (WLAN enabled inkjet printer/scanner)

My first thought was about using a tool such as Icinga for monitoring purposes. The tool is open source, well supported and used by many IT Pros in large companies. Icinga is based on NAGIOS, providing a REST API and a AddOn mechanism. However, the overhead to learn everything from the scratch was to much.

For now, I just wanted a prototype to verify whether my ideas work or not or if there are maybe any showstoppers.

While implementing the prototype, programmatically checking the availability using a simple ping was quite easy as the NAS and the laser printer both use a static IP address. However, the Wi-Fi-enabled inkjet printer uses dynamic assigned IP addresses from the DHCP server.

For the inkjet printer, only the MAC address is known. Chris Pietschmann wrote quite a nice post how to wrap arp.exe in a small .NET class, though.

For those not familiar with ARP, ARP is the acronym for Ethernet Address Resolution Protocol and was originally specified in the RFC 826.  arp.exe is a small Windows command line tool, allowing you to view the address translation tables.

“Displays and modifies the IP-to-Physical address translation tables used by address resolution protocol (ARP).”

Based on this, I wrote a small client capable of checking whether any device talking over TCP/IP is available or not if either the IP or the MAC is known.

Initiating Hacking The Planet

After several years spending time (including writing a book) in the field of intelligent environments, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, I decided to brings some digital life in our home. As winter is coming, I am looking forward to finally start some home automation project called Hack The Planet.

The project itself has two goals, at first it should be fun. Being a computer scientist, geek, nerd, developer gadgeteer this is obvious. Second, I want to document how to deal with a project, abut the artifacts, the process, pans, restrictions, chances and threats hat might occur. In this article, I am going to discuss the very first thoughts of this project as part of the project initiation.

First of all there needs to be a vision. I am not talking about the business case, yet, just a very first vision statement.

“For me and my family, I want to set up our home in a way, I can remotely monitor and control most of the electronic and mechanical devices any time during the day, at any place where I am currently located as long as I have a decent internet access.”

Let’s have a look and revise this vision so it passes Moore’s elevator test:

“For me and my family who want to monitor and control our home remotely, Hack The Planet is a home automation system that is easy to use and extensible. Unlike available off the shelf products our product integrates hard- and software components from various vendors and can be easily extended with new techologies.”

That’s basically a very broad statement, however, for the near future this will lead the direction. I have seen many projects failing, because of the project management keeping the vision under any circumstances.

Second, I invested several hours if the project as I have it in mind is feasible at all wich is a major constraint. Are the devices I have roughly in mind available as off the shelf components, will they be within the project budget (i.e. can I afford them?), can I connect/hack the available hardware, are the serious technologies compatible or can I at least connect them in any way?

Beside creating a business case, drilling down the vision into scopes should be the next step before continuing with the project.