Home Automation
I was always intrigued by the idea of automating the routine parts of my life. Over the years, I looked at different technologies and approaches, but I couldn’t find an approach that would be both simple and cheap and open to tinkering. Finally, thanks to a colleague, I discovered Arduino - an awesome platform supplemented by a lively community of makers. I have quite a few projects in the works and I’m going to post the details here.
Some relevant links: arduino, electronics, home automation.
X10 Motion+Light Sensor
This was my very first Arduino project. It’s still working off of a breadboard and is still controlling lights in my home office. Some day I’m gonna replace X10 with XBee and build a bunch of these to place all around the house.
Attic Fan Thermostat
This is my first big project related to Home Automation. There are two sensors on the thermostat - temperature and relative humidity. The thermostat can work either completely autonomously - monitor and broadcast sensor readings and control the fan appropriately. Alternatively, it can pass control to my home automation system (via ZigBee wireless mesh network) which would decide when to turn the fan on based on data it receives from multiple sources. The thermostat sensor data is also dumped to bot.sud.to for testing and demonstration purposes.
Garage Parking Assistant
This device serves dual purpose - helps to park perfect distance from the wall every time and feed the car presence data to the home automation system via ZigBee wireless mesh network.
Garage Door Sensor/Opener (TODO)
This project will consist of four sensors - two for each door in my garage - and two relays to control the doors. It will also share door status and listen to remote commands via ZigBee wireless mesh network.
Weather Station (TODO)
The goal is to build a complete weather station from scratch. The station will be completely solar powered, will communicate with the home automation system via ZigBee wireless mesh network and will include the following sensors:
- Temperature
- Relative Humidity
- Atmospheric Pressure
- Light Sensor
- Anemometer
- Wind Vane
- Rain Gauge
Car Seat Memory (TODO)
My Jeep has power seats, but no memory. I think adding a couple of memory buttons should be trivial by using multi-turn pots as position sensors.
