I’ve made some progress on the second prototype of the screen masking controller during Thanksgiving break. The first prototype was a proof-of-concept but it was missing something, a curtain controller. Check out the photo above, you’ll see a few devices I’m using to create the controller, a Tini board (runs JAVA VM and has full TCP/IP stack and serial IO which connects to a PIC microprocessor). I wrote a custom webserver for the Tini which interfaces to the PIC via serial and the communication works great. So you can either trigger the masking via an IP based API or via an RF transmitter. I’m holding off on the video input detection method because it would make the system too costly and it would require a lot of work to make it 100% reliable… I may add it in a future version but for now it will stay in the lab. As for the curtain controller, I became a BTX Window Automation Dealer (look for the Mavromatic Store soon) which will interface with the controller nicely.

Imagine a cost effective system that controls your screen masking and curtain with one API. I’ll post more info as I get closer to producing some prototype boards… if you have any feedback or ideas please email me.