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Open Source Discussion |
We have gotten increasingly busy with consulting projects over the past two years and we have not been doing a good job adding new features to Zeus or keeping current with changes in the industry. Several new computer interfaces have been released including the Smarthome USB controller and the X10 CM15A and we haven't added support for them yet.
Zeus was designed to support multiple interfaces and yet we don't have the time to add the necessary support. We have also seen several compatibility issues arise with the database and speech features on Windows XP and the Browser Interface doesn't work well with any Java virtual machine other than the basic Microsoft version which is no longer included with Windows XP.
We usually get several downloads every day and I'm thinking that there might be enough interest in Zeus to support an open source project. We might be willing to donate the existing code as a starting point and provide some organizational and other resources.
Zeus is written in Visual Basic and the browswer interface is written in Java. At this point I'm not exactly sure how an open source project would work. We would probably have to switch to an open source language for this to work. I believe there are other open source home automation projects, but Zeus has been pretty popular over the years. Whether you have programming skills or not, if you are interested in offering comments or suggestions, please contact us on our regular Support page and we will follow up via email. We have not made a decision yet, but we are interested in your opinion and comments.
I hope to hear from you.
Tom Cox
September 9, 2005