The latest project that former JBoss CEO Marc Fleury has started, OpenRemote, released its first open community effort known as Beehive. Well, I won’t necessarily call it a comeback. But former JBoss CEO Marc Fleury’s new project introduced its first public release of an open database for home automation on Oct. 1.
The open-source OpenRemote project announced the first public release of its Beehive database, a Web-based open-source application to collect, format and distribute home automation codes.
The news release for the announcement said Beehive is seeded with 100,000 codes that are compatible with 2,500 devices. “Anyone can browse through Beehive, download whichever codes they need and contribute new codes,” the release said.
In a statement, Fleury said he started the OpenRemote project because: “We’ve seen open source level the playing field in many areas of technology. Home automation is ready for open source. It is a multibillion-dollar industry with a lot of proprietary fragmentation and the resulting integration frustrations. It is an industry that will benefit from embracing the fundamental change that an open standards approach brings.”
In a July post to his blog, Fleury said, “What started for me as an infatuation with the iPhone as a universal remote (I built a prototype on Linux with Appcelerator to command Comcast) has evolved into a full blown affair with an open community that congregates over at www.openremote.org.”
Describing in a bit more detail what the project is about, Fleury added: “So what does OR [OpenRemote] do? We are an Open Community in Domotics, product design is rather open. We provide a hardware reference implementation on Java Linux it will help us develop but also provide the physical bridge to IR/RS/Ethernet/wifi. On the software side use JBoss actually as the base for our server leveraging packaging and installation. It is an application of JBoss in a way. We use Java to map protocols.”
Christian Bauer, the Beehive project lead, said that up to now there has been no cohesiveness to the fragmented home automation, or domotics, market. There have only been scattered collections in different and proprietary formats, he said. “Beehive attempts to change this. We believe there is a need for a truly open, unified way to collect and share all code formats and enforce a clean database schema for easy consumption by both professionals and hobbyists alike.”
The news release said this first version of Beehive uses Linux Infrared Remote Control (LIRC) as a seed and supports infrared command codes for entertainment systems, such as Bang & Olufsen, Denon, DirectTV, Elite, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Lutron, Marantz, Mitsubishi, NEC, Panasonic, Phillips, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and many other leading consumer brands.
“We want to acknowledge the contribution of LIRC.org, the long standing Linux IR community,” Fleury said in a statement. “By building on their work we were able to deliver a fairly unique and powerful contribution to HA in a relatively short time. Now professional integrators and hobbyists alike can look forward to having an easy to use, free, open, and central database of certified IR codes. Enjoy.”