There many possibility to get a Calaos home automation server. You can either download the source code and compile them yourself with the needed dependency. Or you can use Calaos-OS.

The easiest way to start and the recommended way is of course to download Calaos-OS on a dedicated computer.

You will find below a list of out of the box supported hardware for Calaos-OS:

PC computer based on Intel chipset are usually the one providing the best hardware support thanks to Intel open source work on Linux. It is the only target with a good GPU support for now.

The MSI WindBox DC111 is an ideal candidate for running Calaos-OS with a fast and reactive user interface. You can easily find this hardware on most online computer hardware shop.

Setup an Intel computer

A few ARM board are supported:

The chinese Mele box are working, but you must be careful when looking to buy one on a few aspect, as you can find a few different model around 70-80$ on eBay and various chinese website. Or we do not support every version of those board. In fact only the one using the Allwinner A10 is going to work. Other board, using for example the quad core A31, are not supported on Linux and wont work with Calaos-OS. So don't buy those board, or just use them as a media player in the hope that maybe one day they will see the light of Open Source and start contributing decent and useful driver (Said otherwise you should not have any hope if you buy the wrong card to get it supported by Calaos-OS as the manufacturer is doing a shitty job with his software).

It is not difficult to buy the right one. If you read the following : quadcore, CPU A31, Cortex A7, PowerVR, don't buy that one, it's the wrong one, just run away from it.

But if you read : Cortex A8, CPU A10, A20, MALI200, MALI400, that will work.

Oh, and don't forget to check that the board you are buying has a VGA connector ! It might be useful if you want to see the user interface…

Seting up a Mele

Those two board are supported with both A10 (Like the Mele) and A20. The setup process is actually the same as the one for the Mele.

Seting up a Mele

The Pi is a nice candidate, especially for small installation without an interface. It is not a fast and reactive system, but it work. You can use without problem the server and web service. The user interface will work, but below 30FPS and may appear laggy. It is a good system to start testing with.

Seting up a Raspberry Pi

Calaos server manage and drive an home… So you may need something to manage ! Calaos has been created around the WAGO automate. This automate does handle a lot of input/output. It is the recommended setup for new house/apartment.

Seting up Wago automates

Since the open sourcing of the project, new hardware have been added one after another. So now you can drive Raspberry-Pi GPIO.

The Zibase is also supported (used as a bridge between sensors and calaos-server)