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Lifestyle-Integrated Automation Machine
(LIAM)
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PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DOCUMENT IS FOR SYSTEM III ONLY AND IS THEREFORE OUT OF DATE.
This document is a section by section guide to the website. You may go to individual help sections by clicking the titles below:
Main page
Sound,
Cameras,
Visitors
General features
Standard page features,
Security
LifeFuture
Summary page:
Home Summary,
Tasks Summary
LifeConsole
Summary page:
Home Summary,
Tasks Summary
Control page:
Home Control,
Tasks Control
Log page:
Home Log,
Tasks Log
LifeChronicle
Log page
Please note that the Help documentation will always be a work-in-progress as it necessarily lags the implementation of new features. Direct any comments, questions, etc. to the system owner. Enjoy!
This page is the initial launching page and allows the user to enter a name and password. Based on the name and password, an authorization level will be assigned and that will determine the user's access to various information. Much of the information is available to everyone and no login is required. The login is good for 20 minutes only. After that, you may log in again for another 20 minutes. (Session cookies must be enabled for this to work; nothing is stored on your computer.)
The system will automatically move to the LifeConsole Summary page after 10 minutes.
Below the menu & authorization portion of the page is the "bulletin board". Items that appear here are: cam captures, messages left by the owner and, in the future, messages left by LIAM. The most recent items appear at the top. Cam captures automatically occur when the doorbell is answered and people are detected upstairs, an intrusion occurs or the cam capture function is activated via webpage or LCD keypad. Items are automatically removed from the bulletin board by the system depending on item age and type.
The LIAM Theme is a short piece of music that is the "logo" sound of LIAM. Clicking on this link on the main page takes the user to a small window (Java required) that specifies the requirements for playing the audio stream.
This link, if it appears, will take you to any cameras which you may view. This will require Java2 (get it here).
The visitors section simply lists the IP addresses of visitors to the homepage. Visitors to the site from the intranet is not recorded -- only access from the Internet. If a visitor logs in, the username is also recorded. Both anonymous and logged in users may leave messages. HTML mark-ups have been disabled.
These web pages are designed to render well on a desktop browser or a PDA, such as a Pocket PC, and over an intranet or across the Internet. A page may appear differently depending on its context. If not running a Pocket PC browser, it is assumed that the browser has Java. Java is used for a small number of functions to ensure the broadest possible compatibility.
Most pages have a "section bar" for each major section. On this section bar are the following links:
- This will take the user to the homepage.
- LifeFuture Summary. This page
summarizes what will or may happen beyond today,
divided by domain.
- LifeConsole Summary. This page
summarizes what is currently happening, has happened or will happen today,
divided by domain.
- LifeConsole Control. This page
allows immediate control of the environment, tasks and expressions and is divided
by domain. 
- LifeConsole Log. This is a
chronological view of what has happened today, divided by domain.
- LifeChronicle Log. This is a
chronological view of previous days. The domains are blended together
to provide a natural snapshot. 
- Help. This will link to this help
page.Another feature available on many pages is automatic refresh. Depending on the page and network zone, the page may automatically refresh every 3 minutes (for the LifeConsole Summary page) up to every 10 minutes (for the homepage). Any page viewed on a Pocket PC is not automatically refreshed.
At the bottom of many pages is the word "Updated" with date and time. This allows the user to determine how stale pages are if viewed offline.
In order to ensure privacy and security, the LIAM system website has several security features. The first line of defense is network security for both the wired network and the wireless network. The details will not be covered here.
Next is access control. For this, there have been three levels defined. The highest level of authorization is "owner" followed by "friend" followed by "anonymous". The owner level is gained by entering the owner user name and password or by access via the system's intranet. Friend level is set by different user names and passwords and the anonymous level is the default, non logged in state. The following table summarizes system access.
Owner |
Friend |
Anonymous |
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| LifeState Summary - Home | Y | Y | Y |
| LifeState Summary - Tasks | Y | - | - |
| LifeState Categories | Y | Y | ~ |
| LifeConsole Summary - Vacation status | Y | Y | - |
| LifeConsole Summary - Task details and expressions | Y | - | - |
| LifeConsole Summary - All other | Y | Y | Y |
| LifeConsole Control - Home control | Y | - | - |
| LifeConsole Control - All other | Y | Y | Y |
| LifeConsole Log - Cam captures | Y | Y | Y |
| LifeConsole Log - Tasks, email and changed files | Y | - | - |
| LifeConsole Log - Expressions | Y | - | - |
| LifeConsole Log - Annotations | Y | - | - |
| LifeConsole Log - All other | Y | Y | - |
| LifeChronicle | Y | - | - |
Note that occupancy status is allowed at all levels. Some people think that's nuts. Well, between iron gates, video cameras, proximity sensors, etc., etc., I think it's safe to say that you'd be nuts to take advantage of the no-occupancy status. Besides, it might be wrong -- accidentally or on purpose.
LifeFuture is about those things that will happen, or could happen, tomorrow and beyond. Currently, this page is rather simple. In the Home Summary section is the weather forecast (from the National Weather Service) for the next three days.
This section also contains a summary of the shows recorded on the Tivo PVR including the number of shows recorded and the total time recorded. (Obviously, my Tivo has been hacked to provide this functionality.) Clicking on the adjacent link, presents a complete list of all the recorded shows in alphabetic order along with a description and the original record date. Since all of LIAM's pages are renderable on a PDA (e.g., iPaq), a wireless PDA in any TV viewing area is quite handy!
This section presents a summary of all of the tasks currently scheduled to be executed by the owner between today and the end of the week (defined as Sunday). It also summarizes currently executing tasks ("Now") and tasks which have been designated for next week.
For each day, it summarizes the tasks by any time restrictions as to when they can be executed. Most of them can be executed at any time but some must be executed in the morning, evening or at the office. A typical week contains something less than 100 tasks.
Clicking on the link, "see undone tasks", if so authorized, brings the user to a detailed listing of all the tasks clearly separated by day and time slot.
This section of the LifeConsole Summary web page describes the key conditions of the LIAM environmental system. To keep the page very concise, most values use "blanking". This means that rather than showing an inactive condition (e.g., no phone calls received today), it shows nothing at all. Generally speaking, it is much more interesting at nighttime when more systems are engaged.
In all, there are almost three dozen conditions which can be possibly reported. A mostly complete list is described in Scope of Reporting appendix below. Here are notes on some of the less obvious summaries:
Note that accumulated totals (e.g., number of calls today) are cleared once the owner goes to bed (Asleep mode set) or sunrise, whichever happens first. This is an exception. In most cases, LifeConsole information is referenced to the actual day.
If you are viewing the page on a PDA, it must be manually refreshed otherwise it will automatically refresh every three minutes.
This section is created from tasks and other items that are stored and managed in Microsoft Outlook.
In terms of tasks, a few data extensions have been made to the base product to capture additional information; e.g., the day of the week (DOW) the task is assigned. Some programmatic extensions have also been made for various reasons; e.g., if a task is assigned to be worked on now, it is given a high priority so that it appears at the top of the list on the PocketPC version of Outlook.
The information reported is as follows:
As I go through the day, thoughts are always popping in my head. Conveniently, these thoughts typically fall into a few categories: general thoughts as well as miscellaneous factoids. I've made it very easy to capture these thoughts and organize them.
When I come up with thoughts, I pickup the nearest phone, press #2 and record a message, or if I have my PDA handy I press the record button and talk, or I enter it directly on the PDA, or I can enter it on the LifeConsole Control webpage (see above). If it's actionable, it's recorded and/or transcribed as a Task. Otherwise, if it related to me, it's directly entered or transcribed from the voice recording as an Expression. In some cases, it's a factoid and falls outside the LIAM system. (The resulting file is identified however in the Tasks Log.)
This section of the Summary page lists the Expressions recorded that day. A link is provided to bring up a smaller window to show detail beyond that of the subject if the Expression is in the form of a text file (the default). Note that an Expression can be in any form of file including pictures. Expressions, other than text files, are not enterable via the web. Pictures which appear in this section can be seen and clicked on for a larger view. Other documents will appear in filename form only; that is, the filenames appear but are not launchable.
If you are viewing this page on a PDA, it must be manually refreshed otherwise it will automatically refresh every three minutes.
This section allows the user to control some subset of the controllable features of LIAM environmental system. Being "lifestyle-integrated", many functions are completely automated. However, additional control is provided by LCD keypads located throughout the house and through a control webpages -- available on the home intranet or anywhere in the world with a Web connection. As appropriate, local or remote use of the phone through touchtones is also used.
Controlling systems such as lights and heaters and spas and such requires the highest authorization level but feel free to "pretend". You can't hurt anything. Any system connected to the home intranet, wireless or wired, is automatically authorized if the house is occupied by the owner.
A couple of pointers for things that are less than obvious:
This page is refreshed every three minutes (except PocketPCs). This is because the buttons may change based on events.
Tasks Control allows the user to add tasks to the to-do list. At the time of this writing, authorization is not required to do so.
The task may be up to 65 characters long and will, in most cases, suffice to describe the task. The detail box may be used to add additional information. Once a task is added there may be an additional piece of information added, Category. This is one of about 30 choices. Category is permanently stored with the task and is used for various summaries and for use in planning.
In addition to Task and Category, there are three additional pieces of information that may be optionally specified. The first is the preferred day of execution. This can be "today" (the default) through to the next Sunday. Also available are "now" (these are the tasks currently being worked on), "hold" and "next week". The next attribute is Grouping. This is used to chunk together task items which are executed more or less together. It is different than Category in a few ways. First of all, there are only about a dozen different groups so that there are relatively few chunks of things to be done per day and some groups are really more about how tasks are executed such as "out". Tasks with this group designation are executed away from the house and can represent many different categories. If Grouping is not supplied, a default is assigned based on Category. The last optional field is Detail.
Subject is the only required field.
The Expressions Control area allows the entry of random thoughts typically concerning things about myself, what I'd like to do, etc. These thoughts are not actionable. If they were, they would be entered into the system as tasks. (Expressions can also be entered as Microsoft Outlook notes where the body of the text starts with the word "Express". )
All the fields for the Expressions Control are optional but either the subject or detail field must be filled in. If the subject field is not supplied, it is derived from the detail. It simply takes the first sentence or physical line of the detail and makes this the subject. If the detail field is not supplied, it is created from the subject.
It is important to note that once an expression is entered, it can take up to 45 minutes before it appears elsewhere on the site.
Note that expressions can also be photographs or other documents. These however, cannot be entered from the website.
The Home Log simply lists key home automation events at the time they happened. The Home Summary is more or else a summary of this log. Note however that the Log is restarted at midnight everyday whereas the Conditions Summary is cleared at bedtime for accumulating totals (e.g., number of phone calls today) or at dawn whichever comes first. The Log provides more detail than the Home Summary.
A couple of entry types need a little explanation:
The LifeConsole Log may be annotated. This is done by entering the time where the annotation is to be placed, specified in HH:MM or HH:MM:SS format, and the annotation comment.
The part you don't see is that each and every log is stored permanently in a database called Life Chronicle. These logs have been stored there since September 1999! So, yes I can tell you when I went to asleep on January 1, 2000. I've also been recording the inside and outside temperature every hour since then.
This section shows a few things: the tasks completed today, the names of the files created or modified today, personal emails sent or received and any "expressions" that were recorded. Each of these were summarized in the Tasks Summary.
As of this writing partially complete tasks and certain other tasks do not show up here. Generally speaking, seeing actual tasks requires a high level of authorization.
The names of all files created or modified today in the My Documents folder or desktop is also listed here along with the creation date and time. A full path for these files is not provided as files tend to move around. The Windows find function, helps in this regard when necessary.
This section of the Log page lists the Expressions recorded that day. A link is provided to bring up a smaller window to show detail beyond that of the subject if the Expression is in the form of a text file (the default). Note that an Expression can be in any form of file including pictures. Expressions, other than text files, are not enterable via the web. Pictures which appear in this section can be seen and clicked on for a larger view. Other documents will appear in filename form only. That is, the filenames appear but are not launchable.
The LifeConsole Log may be annotated. This is done by entering the time where the annotation is to be placed, specified in HH:MM or HH:MM:SS format, and the annotation comment.
The part you don't see is that each and every log is stored permanently in a database called Life Chronicle. These logs have been stored there since August of 2002 but as needed, I can get a good estimate of completed tasks back to 1997. So yes, I can tell you what I did on Halloween 1997.
The LifeChronicle Log is a chronological database of all that has happened in days prior to the current one. It combines logs from both domains (automation and tasks) into a single chronological log. The resulting log is divided into "modal periods"; i.e., periods of relative inactivity and activity. For example, when the house is asleep or unoccupied, this is considered a "quiet" period and this portion of the log is grayed. Non-quiet periods are called "active" periods and use a regular font color.
The other difference in comparison to the LifeConsole Log is that the Chronicle log's day is determined from the "begin of day" of the current day up to, but not including, the begin of day of the next day. Begin of day is defined as when the owner wakes up or at sunrise as applicable. These two differences -- modal periods and the definition of the day -- more closely match how people perceive time.
Like the LifeConsole Log, the LifeChronicle Log may be annotated. Since Chronicle defines the day differently and may continue past midnight, the entered time for annotation must prefaced with a "+" if it is after midnight. For example, if the day begins at 6am and goes to 5:59am the next day, the time is specified in HH:MM or HH:MM:SS format before midnight and +HH:MM or +HH:MM:SS after midnight but before 5:59am.
LifeChronicle also has several navigation features as it goes back to November 2001 (on-line; it goes back further but not available through the web). When it first comes up, it will show the previous day. The user may type a day in the box to go to a specific day. Words or numbers may be used. All of the following are legal: "Nov 19", "November 19", "11/19", "Nov 19, 2001", etc. If the year is specified, it must be a four digit year. You may also go back or forward a single day ("<" or ">"), respectively. Or go back or forward a month ("«" or "»"), respectively.
The following conditions are the environmental conditions reported by the system (current at the time of this writing):