Smart House Alerts

by mgordon 25. August 2011 09:15

Bad weather on the way? My Smart House let's me know. I have an appointment this afternoon? It lets me know. A favorite blog has an update? Yep.

I decided early on that I wanted my smart house to notify me of some things. As a result, the time I used to spend checking the weather site, checking for blog updates, checking my calendar is now free time. These things are pushed to me, now, by my smart home.

The system has a series of alerts that do little more than poll various end-points or database records on timers. When conditions are such that I need to be notified, I get a message.

How does the application know how to reach me? Well, a couple of ways. In my system, there is a concept of a communication channel. This channel is associated with a particular user of the system and a certain mode of communication (IM, SMS, email, more to come). When I log into IM, for example, the system knows I'm online and that channel is marked as being open. If an alert occurs, it knows I can be reached on that channel.

For other channels, such as email and SMS, the channel always remains open. For these, I can configure the application to notify me on that channel or not depending on the alert.

IM

I use the XMPP protocol for IM communication with my Smart House. This allows me to use Google Talk or Jabber to get messages from or send messages to the system. I have taken a dependency on the the XMPP SDK from Ags. It allows me to connect to the network, to be notified when any of the Smart House's buddies go on or off line, and to send and receive messages.

Connecting is simple. First, instantiate and configure a connection.

Connect to XMPP
  1. Conn = new XmppClientConnection(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["XmppServer"]);
  2. Contacts = null;
  3. Contacts = new List<Contact>();
  4. Conn.EnableCapabilities = true;
  5. Conn.ClientSocket.ConnectTimeout = 60000;
  6. Conn.AutoResolveConnectServer = false;
  7. Conn.ConnectServer = "talk.google.com";
  8. Conn.Port = int.Parse(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["XmppPort"]);
  9. Conn.UseStartTLS = false;
  10. Conn.UseSSL = true;

Then, add some event handlers.

Set Event Handlers
  1. Conn.OnError += conn_OnError;
  2. Conn.OnMessage += conn_OnMessage;
  4. Conn.OnPresence += _conn_OnPresence;
  6. Conn.OnLogin += s =>
  7. {
  8. IsConnected = true;
  9. var p = new Presence(ShowType.chat, "Online") { Type = PresenceType.available };
  10. Conn.Send(p);
  11. };
  13. Conn.OnAuthError += (s, e) => StructuredSpeech2.Logging.Logging.Log("XMPP Authentication Error");
  15. Conn.OnRegisterError += (s, e) => StructuredSpeech2.Logging.Logging.Log("XMPP Register Error: " + e.InnerXml);
  16. Conn.OnSocketError +=
  17. (s, e) =>
  18. StructuredSpeech2.Logging.Logging.Log("XMPP Socket Error: " + e.Message + " :: " + e.StackTrace);
  20. Conn.OnStreamError += (s, e) => StructuredSpeech2.Logging.Logging.Log("XMPP Stream Error: " + e.InnerXml);

Finally, connect.

Connect
  1. try
  2. {
  3. Conn.Open(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["XmppUsername"],
  4. ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["XmppPassword"]);
  5. }
  6. catch
  7. {
  8. Initialize();
  9. }

Notice that many of the event handlers we're handling have to do with various things that can go wrong. There are logged for investigation later. The OnLogin event fires when a connection to the network has been established. Here, I'm setting the system's status to online and available.

When a login fails, we recurse and try again.

The OnPresence event fires when the presence status of a user has changed such as their becoming available or signing off. The event args let us know the buddy and what their new presence value is. When I handle this event, I evaluate the new presence value and then do two things. I keep a collection of all online contacts so I can quickly broadcast a message. The first thing I do when I get a presence event is to update this collection by adding or removing the contact as appropriate. The second thing I do is update the state of the communication channel for the user the buddy represents.

The OnMessage event fires when a message has been received from a buddy. The event arguments specify the the buddy the message is from and the text of the message. When a message is received, I check to see that the buddy is a user on the system and if they are, I process the message with the Language Processor. If the user is not found, a response is sent to the buddy stating they are not a known user and cannot interact with the system.

Finally, I can send a message to any online buddy by calling the send method on the connection class. As with the the previous discussions about the Speech Processor, the entire conversation is logged and used in processing the text sent in a particular message. In the case of IM, the conversation starts when the buddy connects to the network and ends when they disconnect. When a message has been received, the Language Processor processes it and then uses this send method to reply to the appropriate user. Alerts are send in the same way.

The bottom line is that I can send commands to my house via IM and have it act appropriately or it can send me messages to alert me if my attention is needed. A true conversational interface.

Email

I'm using OpenPop to provide the functionality need to check and manipulate emails on the POP server. My Smart House has it's own email account which it polls on a timer. Each time, all messages are pulled from the email account, processed and then deleted. OpenPop allows the system to connect to the pop account and pull down all the messages. First, the connection object is created and configured.

Connect to POP3 account
  1. _client = new Pop3Client();
  2. _client.Connect(_popEmailServer, _popEmailPort, _popEmailUseSsl);
  3. _client.Authenticate(_popEmailUname, _popEmailPassword);
  4. _client.Reset();

Next, the messages are pulled down and processed.

Process Email Messages
  1. _emailCheckTimer.Stop();
  3. try
  4. {
  5. ConnectClient();
  7. if (!_client.Connected)
  8. return;
  10. int messageCount = _client.GetMessageCount();
  12. var messages = new List<Message>(messageCount);
  14. for (int i = 1; i <= messageCount; i++)
  15. {
  16. messages.Add(_client.GetMessage(i));
  17. _client.DeleteMessage(i);
  18. }
  20. List<Message> staticMessages = messages;
  22. var enc = new ASCIIEncoding();
  24. foreach (Message msg in staticMessages)
  25. {
  26. string request = enc.GetString(msg.FindFirstPlainTextVersion().Body);
  27. string fromAddress = msg.Headers.From.Address;
  29. User user = UserRepository.GetUserByEmail(fromAddress);
  31. if (user == null)
  32. {
  33. SendResponse("I don't know this email address.", msg.Headers.From.Address, msg.Headers.Subject);
  34. return;
  35. }
  37. if (_client != null)
  38. {
  39. _client.Disconnect();
  40. _client.Dispose();
  41. }
  44. CommandProcessor.ProcessCommand(request, user, ConversationMode.Email, fromAddress);
  45. }
  47. }
  48. catch (Exception ex)
  49. {
  50. StructuredSpeech2.Logging.Logging.Log("Checking mail " + ex.Message + ex.StackTrace);
  51. }
  52. finally
  53. {
  54. if (_client.Connected)
  55. _client.Disconnect(); ;
  57. _client.Dispose();
  58. }
  60. _emailCheckTimer.Start();

For sending emails, I use the SmtpClient class in the .Net Framework. See its documentation for usage.

SMS

Once email has been implemented, SMS is easy. I use SMS for outgoing messages, only. Most cell phone carriers allow SMS messages to be send via email. For example, an email sent to an address such as 10digitnumber@txt.att.net, will be received as an SMS message on the AT&T network phone having that 10 digit number. For this reason, I use exactly the same approach to send SMS messages as I do for sending emails.

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.Net | Smart Home | Natural Language Processing

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