Have my media follow me

This page was written by Pluto and imported with their permission when LinuxMCE branched off in February, 2007. In general any information should apply to LinuxMCE. However, this page should be edited to reflect changes to LinuxMCE and remove old references to Pluto.

How to set it up

To automatically detect when you enter a room you need a device that can detect your presence. Normally this is done using the same Bluetooth Dongles and Bluetooth mobile phones you use as Orbiters. However you can also add some other mechanism like RFID cards. To move media where there is no such automatic detection means manually execute the 'follow-me' as explained below.

You could also create an event handler to fire the "Follow_Me" events. For example if you add iButton sensors throughout the house and give each user an iButton (about $2), you could add an event handler that picks up the iButton's "Presence Detected" event and in turn fires a Follow_Me event. Then when a user enters the room, he touches his iButton in the reader and his lights, media, etc. follow there.

How to use it

You must enable follow me media for yourself. Do this by holding down the media button on your mobile phone orbiter, or on a Web pad, PDA, or on-screen Orbiter, select your user, go to the media floorplan, and touched the "F" button. When the "F" appears on the phone, or is shown on the Orbiter with a cross over it, then follow me is active for this user. You can also enable follow me for lighting, climate, telecom and security the same way. When it is enabled for media any media you start will follow you as you move into rooms that have detectors, such as Bluetooth dongles. You can also just take any Orbiter and change the room on it. This does the same thing and lets you activate follow me even for rooms without Bluetooth. For example, start a movie in one room using a PDA orbiter. Turn on 'follow-me'. Then on the Orbiter change to another room like you normally do by touching the room button. The movie will transfer to that new room.

Note the follow-me settings are individual for each user. If you unable follow me that does not mean that follow me will be enabled for any other users in the house. Whenever possible your media will resume where it left off, however some media players may not support this feature.

Programmer's guide

All the Bluetooth dongle devices in the house are continually reporting the phones' mac addresses and signal strengths with the Mobile_orbiter_detected event. Orbiter_Plugin intercepts these events and when it determines a user has moved, it fires events for whatever follow-me modes are turned on, like Follow_Me_Lighting, or Follow_Me_Media. You can create another device that detects and fires the same event.