HACS (Home Automation Control Server) 
(C) 2010-2014 Daniel Kirstenpfad

                                                                           +-------------+
                                                                  +--------+  ezcontrol  |
 +----------+                                                     |thread  |434 / 868 mhz|
 |          |                                                     |        +-------------+
 |          |                                                     |
 |          |                                                     |
 |          |                                                     |
 |          |                            +-------------------+    |        +----------------+
 |          |     +---------------+      |     h.a.c.s       |    |        |    ELV MAX!    |
 |          +-----+RESTful Service+------+  home automation  +----+--------+ thermostat and |
 |  Client  +-----+ built-in http +------+  control server   |    |thread  |shutter contacts|
 |          |     +---------------+      |                   |    |        +----------------+
 |          |                            +---------+-------+-+    |
 |          |                                      |       |      |
 |          |                                      |       |      |
 |          |                                      |       |      |        +-------------------+
 |          |                                      |       |      +--------+   SolarLog500     |
 |          |                                      |       |       thread  | roof solar panel  |
 +----------+                               +------+-----+ |               |inverter monitoring|
                                            |Data Storage| |               +-------------------+
                                            +------------+ |
                                                           +------+
                                                                  |
                                                                  |
                                                           +------+------+
                                                           |Scripting and|
                                                           |Monitoring   |
                                                           +-------------+

In the last 10+ years I was fiddling with different home automation concepts. 
Because of the lack of broad use cases at that time no one seemed to be interested
in having sensors and actors like crazy at home. In fact not that many people seem
to care these days. I strongly believe many people will care in the future. Not
that they would use anything like the tools I want to create and use. It's just
that I cannot wait until the main stream sees a need for the things I and hopefully
you need today.

That said I found a nice plastic box I want to use in a winter project I'll call
HACS. This plastic box is called "EzControl XS1". It comes with several visible
and invisible interfaces.

The visible and obvious ones are: power, 100 mbit ethernet, sd card slot. So it
takes some power and does something on the network. The not so obvious interfaces
are the most interesting ones: the EzControl XS1 comes with the ability to send
and receive on 433 Mhz and 868 Mhz.

Yes these are the ranges used by switchable and dimable power sockets, temperature
sensor and AMR. Another great feature of the EzControl XS1 is the embedded WebServer
with which the users application (the one I want to write) can interact using a
HTTP/JSON Protocol. 

Conclusion: Sensor data and Actor control using JSON. How great is that!

There is some example code available (even a proprietary iPad/iPhone client) but
since I want to have some custom features I do not currently see to be available
in already available software I am going to write a set of tools which will get
and protocol sensor data and run scripts to controls actors.

And basically HACS is a project to come up with first a framework and toolset
to control and access the EzControl XS1 and secondly integrate with some if not
all of the other available home automation / sensor-actor gadgets.