As I have posted before I am in the early stages of automating my home to make it smarter and interact better with the people (and dog) that live within it. My system is based on the Idratek system, which is a UK company that is very supportive.

The following "How-to..." guide was written by "Kevin" in response to a question I asked on the Automated Home forum pages (http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2108). I have just reformatted it for easier reading and added screenshots to make it easier to follow.

In summary the guide explains how to take temperature readings from a laptop using Speedfan (http://www.almico.com/) and over the xAP protocol have these mapped into the Idratek Cortex software and output to a new Idratek DFP02 display panel. It is relatively simple example which doesn't require any additional hardware to demonstrate the capabilities of both xAP and Idratek.

The guide assumes the following have already been installed and configured:

• - xAP software, xFx Hub, running on same computer as Cortex
• - xAP software, xFx Viewer, running on the same computer as Cortex
• - Speedfan with xAP protocol enabled, can be on the same machine as Cortex or any other machine on the same network subnet
• - Licensed version of Cortex from Idratek with the additional Home-Automation module.

The xFx Express Hub must always be the first application to start in the Cortex / xAP stack so that it can handle subsequent requests from additional xAP applications (including Cortex). All additional xAP enabled applications will then start successfully and register against the hub rather than one application starting successfully and the remaining failing (the first app hogs the port, UDP 3639)

The xfx Viewer shows the xAP messages that are broadcasting around the network. It makes it much easier to see what is going on as well as diagrammatically list the various xAP applications and devices. You can also resend xAP messages, which can prove very useful when testing, rather than wait for messages to be resent.

Speedfan is a utility that mainly reports temperature and fan speeds on a computer, it can control the fans and clock speeds if you feel adventurous. It is simple at what it does but advanced in its implementation. It has been chosen in this exercise because of its xAP enablement and it is readily available.

Finally, in this first part it is necessary to ensure the Cortex software from Idratek is enabled for the Home-Automation module. The HA activation is an additional fee and requires a new license code.