HalCreator

 I've added more textures (pictures on objects) to make it look a little bit more appetizing. Later I'll give the user the ability to change textures, stuff like bricks and tiles for the floors and walls.  Changed the menu system around. Also adding parent/child relationships. For instance, the pane of the window is the child of the frame and the pane should have the animation and not the frame. Buggy. Pierre

 Made a lot of changes today. Added help and rearranged the menus to be drop down menus instead of a panel that opens on the left. Removed log at bottom of screen for more real estate for the scene.  Changed a lot of colors that were really hard to read. Added dialogs for scene defaults and various other functions.  Added a way to add a sensor remotely to Hal. The user still needs someone to put the sensor in and click on the join button at the home or facility.  Added a device dialog that shows all the devices and allows renaming them. That also makes it so that when a new sensor is added, it shows up as a large alphanumeric label that can be renamed so that you know what the sensor is so that when you bind it to an animated object, you'll know what you're connecting to. All in all, a really big day. Pierre

 It's time to start adding a help system to Halcreator. I don't even remember all the stuff I've added and how to get to all of it. That's funny, I'm the one writing the program and I'm forgetting how to use parts of it.  It's really strange how fast I've created this program, that is, with the help of Claude Code AI. This would have taken me 10 times as long to make it work. Probably more. I started this program May 16th of 2026 and it's already just July the 18th. Now I'm finding myself in the enviable position of actually documenting what the AI and I have done together. Claude Code is unbelievably powerful. I can't wait to see how much I get done in the next few months. At this time, no one is reading my posts, so it's a way for me to remember what my progress looks like more than anything else. Pierre

 This is a description of why Hal fills a void that exists in home and business automation. Its done with the Gemini AI, so its a bit esoteric. It fits though, Halcreator really is a paradigm shift. The brain thinks in 3d not in labels and lists. By visualizing both the real world in an animated form that mimics real world events in real time, the user gets an immediate grasp of what's happening in their environment.  All too often,  I've seen, in the world of software, programmers and users being forced into converting what they see and what is taking place under the covers of the computer code. Hal and Halcreator puts animation front and center. You see what is going on rather than guessing. And guessing is what makes consultants so powerful. Halcreator places that power with the user. Anyway here is Gemini AI talking: HalCreator: A Paradigm Shift in Home and business Automation. Modern home and business automation is often a trade-off between powerful, complex systems ...

 3d has an immense amount of power to present animations. Three.js creates a problem where I cant just throw incredible textures (pictures applied to objects) on my 3d walls and floors.  Unreal presents incredible 3d views where games are really intricate and look almost real. But, you have to download huge amounts of data to present these game scenes. I dont have that luxury. I can, later on, make it look really good, after I get the 3d engine working in the browser with all the niceties I can throw at it, i will have a way of making the scenes look good when the system can support it. So they'll be intelligence to decide how pretty the environment can be. Some set of choices that will allow high resolutions. Anyway, the next is getting parent/child relationships working. That's where, let's say you put a window up on a wall. Well windows come in 2 pieces, the frame and the glass pane. That's 2 objects.   When we position the frame, the pane should always come with ...

 The menu system is upgraded and I've removed a lot of unnecessary stuff. So many changes. I've added an animation dialog for on and off objects like doors and windows.  I added a bunch of sparkles so that when an object goes from on to off or off to on, it sprinkles sparkles from the object so that you know when something changes in the scene.  There's an animation dialog now where you can rotate, resize or move an object when it changes from on to off or off to on. I was going to place all that from animations in blender but it's so much easier and move powerful to do it from the building editor viewer. I needed to show what animations do throughout the scene so there's a checkbox that when checked all the animations play one after the other so that you know what the objects will do when they change from on to off and off to on. Pierre

 So ive decided to use the mqtt side of home automation until I've got it working in Hal. That might take several years because home assistant is such a powerful sensor system. My biggest problem, though, is getting mqtt to talk to Hal. Ive given up on my Raspberry Pi and im setting up Linux to do the talking.  Ive basically been trying for 2 days getting it to talk. There's no way in hell AI is ready to figure it all out. It really shows a lack of intuition. AI is really powerful figuring out something someone has done somewhere before. In fact, it blows me away just how incredibly powerful it is. The problem: it has no idea how to deal effectively with what I need to do to install home assistant. Yeah, it gives me all the commands but if those commands dont work,  it does get lost.  Im the proof of that.  Ive spent 2 days trying different embedded devices and still, i have no satisfaction. And that is following its every command.  Pierre

 Home assistant (HA), is a wonderful system. It supports all the protocols and sensors i want to support. It just doesnt show the world the way I crave to see it. Protocols, thats a language that sensors use to talk to a computer. My favorite is Zigbee followed by Zwave and all the rest. Right now, Hal talks Zigbee, In the world of industrial automation, Modbus TCP and others, I've supported for decades.  So this is what I'm going to do. I'll be using home assistant to talk with all the protocols I dont support yet. Slowly, I'll replace it with my schematic system. That way, you'll be able to see its logic in an animated way along with the real world around you or remotely. I'll be putting home assistant on a Raspberry Pi. On the development side,  I'll be using my laptop, which will be replaced with another Raspbeery Pi or a small computer I have. In a way, I love doing this. I get to push the envelope that the normal world ignores. I get to play with game ...

 Finally. A dependable alarm. There are still a lot of issues to handle. I'm getting inputs that trigger an alarm. Then the system creates an alarm box that shows which door or window that triggered the alarm. The door opens when the door on screen and closes when the door opens. So I need to reverse the animation in Blender. I need to setup groups of alarms.  The dialog dissapears when the door closes. It should latch until acknowledged. I need outputs so that I can I can sound an alarm.  There is still a massive issue of how I'm going to alarm on a smartphone when the browser is closed. Otherwise, only a local alarm will sound Thats ok for now. Maybe i can send a text or call the smartphone. That would work.  So much todo.  The main thing is , the entire environment is working now. I have a server on the internet that serves as a relay that passes everything to anyone connected on a remote browser which can pass local information to a remote location. Ive sepa...

 Its worth mentioning that most companies that removed employees to replace them with AI, have rehired most of those people back. I know AI. I know how it works. It's a machine,  not a person. Why anyone who has any sense about them would believe they would take over the world and be a higher form of intelligence.  Get a grip would ya. Good lord, what massive egos these AI engineers have. Do i think a car is an entity because it can travel at 120 miles per hour and i can't? Do I think an AI is an entity because it flips transistors and can do logic 1000 times faster than a human. Of course, if you believr you're an automaton, I get it. The fact of I amness is the reason why we are not elements. But, but, but, and but, if you keep damaging people and you just dont get it. I can understand that you think you're a robot. Pierre

 Finally, after a month after working on alarms and the way they should work remotely. There is still a lot of work to do to make it nice and easy to use. The basics, though, are done.  I started using Claude Code in Microsoft VS Code and wow, what a difference. Claude Code reaches into my code directories and looks at what needs to be done and then makes the changes that are needed.  I don't have a problem with that because I created a backup program that rolls through my directories and backs up the files that changed by copying them and then adds the date and time to the ending of those files. So that way, I keep a copy of all my changes. Pierre

 Oh man. Alarms over the internet is really complicated. In a power plant and most automation systems, alarms are static. That is, the installer creates the alarms using software. The user really has very little control over changing alarms. What im doing hereis to create software that can create alarms dynamically. That's giving the user power to create alarms. And the AI front end will be able to explain and take action.  What does that mean? Let's say the homeowner sticks a zigbee contact switch to a window. Then the user adds a window on a wall, using the browser 3d program scene. What happens is that Hal, which is running locally, at the house or business, now adds a schematic with blocks at the home or business, in the software running locally in the building,  now sends that zigbee contact switch sensor to the animated object that was just added remotely on the browser over the internet. Now the user can click a button that creates an alarm for that object. The nam...