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A word from our sponsors
I’d like to say a big thank you to our HomeCamp sponsors: CurrentCost, Greenmonk, Pachube , ReactionGrid and Onzo as without them this event would not be happening.
HomeCamp Media partners
I’m delighted to announce that theattick.tv are the official Media Partners for HomeCamp and will be streaming the event over on the HomeCamp ustream.tv channel and also streaming into the HomeCamp sim on ReactionGrid.
They will also be interviewing people thoughout the day and putting together video footage from the day for HomeCamp TV. SO if you are coming to the event, be sure to get yourself on film!
HomeCamp 2 is this Saturday
Following hot on the heels of the first HomeCamp, so HomeCamp 2 happens. For the uninitiated, HomeCamp is the home hacking, automation and green technology community. Think smart meters, monitoring and graphing energy usage.
HomeCamp 2 is on Saturday 25th April 2009, 10am until 6pm at Bash Creations, 65-71 Scrutton Street, London, EC2A 4PJ. A map of the venue is here.
HomeCamp 2 aims to build on the success of the first event, with an OpenSim event running alongside for virtual participation and to demo the RealWorld and VirtualWorld modelling and automation that the community has been doing.
I’d like to say a big thank you to our sponsors, CurrentCost, Greenmonk, Pachube, ReactionGrid and Onzo, as without them this event would not be happening.
theattick.tv are the official Media Partners for HomeCamp and will be streaming the event over on the HomeCamp ustream.tv channel and also streaming into the HomeCamp sim on ReactionGrid. They will also be interviewing people thoughout the day and putting together video footage from the day for HomeCamp TV. So if you are coming to the event, be sure to get yourself on film!
So far have around 75 people signed up. If you can’t make it, then you can tune in either on the live video ustream, or sign up on ReactionGrid and join us virtually on OpenSim.
More details and videos on the blog http://homecamp.org.uk
For the wiki, which includes signup and is the main portal to all the online activity: http://homecamp.pbwiki.com/
Live video stream on the day of the event and recordings from the first HomeCamp: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/homecamp
Virtual HomeCamp Meeting
OK, we’re trying to setup a meeting on the HomeCamp sim. Since we burst on the ReactionGrid scene with OpenSim, we have been throwing up real estate and trying scripts. After playing and eating more memory and CPU than we probably should, we need a meeting to discuss quite a few issues.
1. We currently have script limitations that everyone needs to respect
2. We have ideas to overcome the script limitations. Fingers crossed on Plan A!
3. A freemium idea – office and house rental is free, script usage is a small monthly subscription.
4. Sponsorship opportunities
5. Land building ideas and general build styles
6. Regular events and training + publicity
We have had great community action going on at the HomeCamp sim and I am looking forward to the future with this one. We have rented a full row of offices now.
Welcoming new tennants Craig Cmehil and Tish Shute.
I’m thinking we have a meeting on Thursday 26th March. Seems a week away, but we all seem to be busy 
Please let me know your thoughts and ideas regarding this on the google group discussion and whether you will be coming along.
The land grab begins 
Grab Yourself an Office on Virtual HomeCamp
We now have four Home Camp sims on ReactionGrid on OpenSim:
HomeCamp
HomeCamp Labs
HomeCamp Sandbox
HomeCamp Sandbox2
From the meeting we had last Thursday night, we are aiming to have a virtual space to allow us to grow the Home Camp community, to integrate Virtual Worlds with Real World and a great place to run events and sessions. I’m not entirely sure how we’ll set these up and I am sure we will rename some of the sims.
Stay tuned for the Virtual HomeCamp events calendar, as we are planning on having a regular weekly meeting, certainly initially, and some training sessions to help people get up and running quickly on OpenSim.
A photo taken at the first Virtual HomeCamp meeting on the HomeCamp sim.
We currently have 13 offices on the HomeCamp sim. One of those is the HomeCamp main office and another has already been rented out to Mike TheBee. So feel free to come and grab yourself an office. There is no charge. Any office with a “Vacant. Enquire within” sign, just stake your claim on the office space. You might also want to ping either me or Tish Shute so we know it is your office.
Grab any office with a “Vacant. Enquire within” sign on the front. You’re also welcome to have a house and Dave Pentecost has already got a house rigged up with a live feed from Pachube, which is available to copy and use.
I’m on a building extravaganza at the moment, putting together the buildings and the real estate on the sims. As soon as the first batch of offices are taken up, I’ll create some more and we’ll keep filling up.
HomeCamp Labs is potentially the sim that we should use to run any experimental scripts. So we might want to think about limiting live data feeds and pachube feeds to the Labs sim. We are planning to have an auditorium for presentations and conference events and there will also be an expo area where green tech companies can have a booth. So get in touch if you want to have a booth in the Virtual HomeCamp expo.
The HomeCamp Sandbox sim is the place to go and do whatever you want. Try stuff and build. Just be kind to the environment and bear in mind that anything in the Sandbox area is likely to be deleted at any point. So do not leave important stuff in there, or let us know about it.
Overall, really excited by the strong turnout of people at the first Virtual HomeCamp meeting. Keep an eye on the wiki for the next one. There are also instructions on the wiki to get you up and running on OpenSim and ReactionGrid.
Virtual HomeCamp on OpenSim
We now have a HomeCamp SIM setup on ReactionGrid, which is on OpenSim. We are aiming to run a virtual world event alongside the main Home Camp.
ReactionGrid is already doing some great work with modelling using Pachube inputs from real life objects and we hope to have some demo environments setup for the event. As always, watch this space for more details, or drop by HomeCamp on the SIM.
If you are interested in getting involved on the HomeCamp Sim, then let us know in the Google Group discussion. You can also take a look at the Virtual HomeCamp wiki page for more details.
Announcing Home Camp 2
Home Camp 2 will be taking place on Saturday 25th April 2009 at Bash Creations:
65-71 Scrutton Street, London, EC2A 4PJ.
We are planning to have two tracks at this Home Camp. One track will be hands on hacking and the other track will be more presentation based. We feel both tracks have valid appeal, but would like to hear your comments on this.
We are also hoping to have Home Camp running on OpenSim so you can attend the event virtually if you are unable to make it.
Stay tuned as we release more details and if you haven’t signed up for Home Camp 2, head over to the wiki and signup.
Mission statement ideas
I got to thinking that it would be useful to have a pithy description of what Home Camp is all about.
Here’s a starting thought:
The home hacking, automation and green technology community
Let’s crowdsource this, though – I think that’s a nice short statement which describes what Home Camp covers without being either too exclusive, or specifically inclusive – but maybe other people have additions, changes, etc.?
Home Camp TV – what’s next? you decide!
So our initial series of Home Camp TV videos has now been published. What did you think? We’d love to hear your feedback, either on this post, the blog entries for the individual videos themselves, or over on YouTube.
Although we started this as part of the Friday Morning Report video marathon, it has been fun to put together. I’d be happy to produce some more episodes if there’s enough interest.
So… let us know what you think, what ideas you have for future episodes, what you want to hear about… it’s all about the community! Also, remember to visit the Home Camp wiki to add ideas for discussion at future meetups.
Home Camp TV – Current Cost live demo
Another Current Cost hack… Rich Cumbers and Dale Lane built the Current Cost Live application as part of Mashed 08 last year. I talked to Rich about the idea behind the application – mashing up the gaming concept from XBox Live and using competitiveness to drive down home energy usage.
Home Camp TV – discussion with an enthusiast
Last week I chatted on the phone with one of the attendees from Home Camp 08, Chris Hodgins. During the conversation we talked about his experience of Home Camp, his expectations of what might happen in the future, and how he became interested in the whole home automation and monitoring space.
Thanks very much for your time, Chris!
Home Camp TV – demo of a desktop application
In today’s episode of Home Camp TV, I interview Dale Lane, one of the organisers of the first Home Camp event and an active hacker on all sorts of projects, which you can read about on his blog. Dale showed me his very nice desktop application for analysing energy usage, which includes some interesting features such as the ability to watch usage against the overall National Grid consumption.
Find Dale’s Current Cost GUI app on Google Code.
Home Camp TV – Andy Piper Interview
Here is an interview with Andy Piper, looking back at the first Home Camp and looking forward to the next one in April. General rambling about software and hardware hacks.
We cover a lot of subjects in this conversation, including home automation, Current Cost, Google Power Meter, Pachube, Nokia Home Control Center, arduino, Home Easy to name a few.
Take a look at the wiki for details of the next Home Camp in April.
Home Camp TV – Martin Dix interview
This week, Chris and I have been putting together some videos for what we’re calling “Home Camp TV” – originally intended to be a segment on the Friday Morning Report 24 hour marathon, which has sadly been postponed (get well soon, Craig!). So for now, we’re posting these videos individually… they should appear in the Friday Morning Report slot later as well. You can still contribute to Craig’s charity drive, which is already very close to target.
The first Home Camp TV video is a brief chat with Martin Dix from CurrentCost about how the company’s technology is moving forward. Keep an eye on the blog for a few more episodes over the coming days!
Bonus link – you can read a little bit more about Martin’s visit to Hursley and see photos on eightbar.
Google joins the power monitoring party
In case you don’t follow the #homecamp tweets on Twitter… you may not have noticed that Google announced their new PowerMeter tool, which plays in the same space as a lot of technologies that we talked about at HomeCamp 08 (Pachube, CurrentCost, Wattson and so on). It’s great to see that so many people are beginning to realise the benefits of smart metering and understanding personal energy utilisation
Home Camp 09
Today we announced Home Camp 09 which will take place in April 2009.
We are yet to confirm the exact date and venue. However, head over to the wiki and sign-up and suggest session topics.
Home Camp is Live and Monitoring
After a few hectic weeks in the planning, I’m pleased to say that Home Camp happens today. I’m looking forward to this event. Ever since I started to think about Home Camp, it has been fun watching the event progress.
If you can’t come along in person, we’re hoping to stream as much as we can over at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/homecamp.
Home Camp Supporters
I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone for supporting Home Camp. There has been much behind the scenes work done by a huge amount of people, many of which will not be attending. It truly has been a joy working with you all while putting together Home Camp.
Home Camp is supported by Current Cost, who is sponsoring lunch, tea and coffee and furnishing each attendee with a new model CC128 Current Cost meter when they become available in December. Unfortunately, we will not be walking away with these new meters in our hand on the day, but we will all receive the new Current Cost meter when they become available in December.
Home Camp is supported by Green Monk, who is sponsoring drinks for Home Camp
A special thanks to the following people for their continued help and support in organising Home Camp:
Andy Stanford-Clark
Mark Charmer
James Governor
Janice McGinn
Alexis Biller
Finally a huge thanks for everyone at IBM and twitter followers for the retweeting, blogging and generally pimping links about Home Camp.
Home Camp Update
Just wanted to give everyone a heads up about Home Camp which is shaping up to be a great event. There are only a couple of places left now, so if you haven’t put your name down on the wiki, then head over and sign up.
The event is limited to 50 places with 49 people having signed up. If we go over the 50, then continue to put your name down in case we have any last minute drop outs etc.
Current Cost are giving each attendee to Home Camp a shiny new Current Cost monitor. We’ll be one of the first to get our hands on these.
Do remember to suggest your session topic over on the google discussion. We are also using this area to share code. Ruby code was added this week. Depending how many session topics are suggested, will depend how we run the day. So feel free to suggest ideas.
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/homecamp?hl=en
Look forward to seeing you all there next week and if you can’t make it, we’ll have some live streams.
Request for session topics
Home Camp is an unconference and so the content is very much driven by everyone attending. If you are coming along and would like to present a topic, then please join the discussion and suggest ideas.
We would like to see as many people as possible get involved with presenting content on the day, although this is not a requirement.
So we have setup a discussion over on the Home Camp Google Group. Head over and join the discussion.
Expect to see sessions on:
Using a current cost meter to monitor electricity
Using Really Small Message Broker for home automation
Making your house tweet
Saving energy with low power servers and devices like a Linksys SLUG or Viglen.
Monitoring water supply
Monitoring gas usage
Home Camp on Upcoming and Facebook
We’re setting up Home Camp on all the usual networks. Watch this blog for announcements as we release details. You can find Home Camp over on Upcoming and Facebook. So if you are coming along, please add yourselves to the list if you use those services.
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