I have my holy grail of HT/HA!

I got what boys like, I got what boys want - my holy grail of integrated HA/HT! I've been salivating about this for 14 months - the ability to use a custom UI to control *everything* I do. I had it all except SageTV, and now I have that!

Here's my sageTV recordings, viewable and playable directly from within a custom built CQC UI, where I have receiver/any other device control on the same page!

Thank you thank you thank you to SageTV for having an open API. There's 2 other folks working on creating this same functionality for MythTV and VMC, but Sage won because of that exact reason.

The driver is still in alpha, so all the recorded detail isn't yet available (ie, see the show description, recorded time, etc, before you play), but the ability to use one of the major DVR players (ie, SageTV, MCE, or VMC) to display info on a custom UI with HA controls is a major major leap forward!

The watch show button immediately starts playing the show within sage, no menu browsing necessary.

Life just gets better and better. The driver writer got all the details, plus now the upcoming recording schedule.

Of course, pure visibility from any of my touchpanels is only the beginning. Now that I have access to this data, there's other things I can do given that I'm using a fullblown HA engine. For example, one very real thing is that if the doorbell or telephone rings and I'm watching TV and:

1) the TV show category is *not* childrens, and
2) The callerid isn't on some form of blocking rules I come up with, and
3) Timeslot is within certain parameters THEN

pause the TV show automatically so I can deal with the interruption.

Ok, maybe those rules aren't exactly correct, but you get the point. True integration across house subsystems is not a good thing, it is the best of things.

Which thread? There's been tons of traffic here lately, hard to keep up with them all.

Oh, i'm not going to ignore the doorbell at all. It's just that now that I have access to details about the TV from inside my HA engine, it's one step closer to the goal of automatically pausing SageTV and popping up a shot of my cameras if the doorbell rings and SageTV isn't playing back a kids show (ie, they're the ones watching TV, not me).

Here's a slightly older screenshot - not entirely the same anymore but it's good enough for this conversation and I have ie.

In addition to the obvious upside of easily checking upcoming recordings from my touchpanels (ie, confirm 24 will tape tonight), I'm looking to automatically minimize SageTV and bring up this screen. Then, based on some thoughts I don't currently have clear, restore it.

This entire thing isnt' smoothly automatable at this moment, but Dean is already working on the CQC side of automatic screen changes. Hopefully within 3ish months, the entire transition/automation will run like butter!

Actually both. I prefer to not use a touchpanel in the home theater room as I like tactile remotes better. There, I use this screen in concert with an MX850 remote (while TV is on) and a bluetooth mouse for control.

The touchpanels are in the kitchen and MBR, and are used primarily for non-video purposes (audio, lights, hvac, etc).

I also use my office PC, my laptop, and my kids use their PC, although admittedly they have a completely different and stripped down UI for control.


It's a Fujitsu 3400. Here's a thread with all the various details.

I have one that I ran a wired connection to, and another with a wifi card.

Do you have a hardbutton remote of any kind in there, or is it all driven by those monitors, including volume adjustment/etc during playback?

My "H/T" is really the family room which also serves as a kids playroom. It's only 11x13, so we don't have the room for anything else, even a tiny 10" Fujtsu touchpanel like I have elsewhere.