I’ve re-enabled comments on the blog. They still need to be approved manually by me so don’t be surprised if it takes awhile for them to show up.

//Tomi B.

Another great post by our guest blogger Richard Perlman:

I hacked at the VistaICM email process and here is what I found:

Part 1: The information for the email is sent, via HTTP, to outgoing.in2myhome.com. So, If you are running a local DNS server, you can enter a record for that host/domain and resolve it to some other HTTP server.

Part 2: The information is sent as a GET request. I.e. It’s ALL in the URL. Really simple (and insecure). For example, here is an “Armed” notification:
GET /email.aspx?address=alarm%40foo.com&subject=Security+Alert&message=System+Armed&mac=00%3A0e%3A70%3A00%3A35%3A7d&time=02-16-2010+01%3A03%3A33+PM

So, all that would need to be done is to write a simple cgi-bin script to handle requests for /email.aspx to parse the GET request and create an email or do whatever you wanted.

Richard

I got a great email from Richard Perlman containing detailed information about the latest ICM update 2.8. Since people tend to end up here for info on the ICM he wanted to share it with the rest of you. Thanks Richard!

Many changes in the Vista ICM, some significant:

Most notable: Honeywell has discontinued the Vista ICM. It seems there was some disagreement with in2net over fees. Since in2net seems to have designed most of the internal code, it doesn't look good for further support. I have emailed them, but they don't reply. The immediate result is that email is effectively dead, unless you pay a fee. If you are running a DNS service on your network it should be simple to "deflect" the HTML connection used by the ICM to pass email messages to in2net to a local web server. Then you'd just have to figure out how they pack the email message into the HTML content.

Other things as of release 2.8:

1. There is no more backup (i.e. download). You can still upload, but "download" is pretty much limited to cat/copy/paste.
2. A lot of the web pages, like the PDA page, are now configured differently, not as easy to change.
3. I found the same TCP data that was on port 50003 on port 50001 too and I also found an in2networks debug facility of port 50501. But, I can't make any sense of it.

On the other hand, using the TCP interface I have been able to build a fairly simple state engine in Perl. This maintains a state table for each zone, as well as reporting the panel state. The script was customized to Interface to the Indigo home automation system running on a Mac. But, it could be easily modified to report to other services. Take a look at:

http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/userforum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5444&p=32308&hilit=ademco#p32308

If there is sufficient interest maybe we can set up a small mail-list to share ideas and discoveries, etc.

Richard Perlman

'Twas a nice trip to Castello di Amorosa in Napa Valley, California.

Castello di Amorosa from Tomi Blinnikka on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

NorCalChallengers @ San Juan Bautista from Tomi Blinnikka on Vimeo.

NorCalChallengers @ Blackhawk Auto Museum from Tomi Blinnikka on Vimeo.

Does Wave (the Wave protocol really) have any notion of DNS records similar to MX records for email? As a user, I find it confusing that I have to add people to my contacts as "user@googlewave.com" when their real account is "user@gmail.com" for example. As far as I have bothered to look into it, this is because the user's identity is tied to the Wave server directly (for federation). This in itself is a step backwards. There's a reason OpenID was created, namely to associate identity with a user and not a system. Though how you'd really implement that type of disassociation with Wave Federation isn't something I could say.

All of the samples I cam across using WriteableBitmap seemed to be from a prerelease version. They call the constructor with an additional parameter and don't call Invalidate() which is required for the anything to actually show up in the bitmap.

private void UpdatePreview()
{
WriteableBitmap bitmap = new WriteableBitmap((int)imageSource.Width, (int)imageSource.Height);
bitmap.Render(imageSource, new TranslateTransform());
bitmap.Invalidate();
imgPreview.Source = bitmap;
}

Just noticed that there's been an update available for the Honeywell / In2Networks Vista ICM. The latest version is in2 fusion image_2.8.0 - Tue Dec 30 09:55:28 MST 2008. The old root password still works and I haven’t seen any adverse side effects yet.

The change log is as follows (http://inunicn.com/honeywell_ecp/version.htm):

2.8.0

• Improved device management, time management, and setup.
• Vizia ICM - New ICM controls Leviton ViziaRF lighting systems.
• Energy ICM - Added humidity alerts and improved EnviraCom error handling.

2.7.2

• Added trouble-free remote access support and event logging through www.in2myhome.com
• Improved support for corporate networks and static IP addressing.
• Reset button handling works more reliably.
• Email reliability is improved with a trusted email server.
• Local web page improvements reduce Java errors.

That would be my guess. Rock Band: The Beatles Edition will be out that day, so why not on iTunes as well?