We all need to minimize energy consumption these days, so what you really don’t want is for the freezer door to be not completely closed, accidentally, wasting a lot of…
RequireIoT Posts
This sensor node is attached to the gas meter in my home. It uses a 2,4 GHz RF link to a MySensors MQTT gateway to reports natural gas consumption data…
I needed a couple of motions sensors to automate lighting in hallways and other rooms. Since the lights should only turn on when it is dark, the system also needs…
When my alarm clock goes off in the morning, the lamp on my bedside table also turns on, to help me wake up, and its color indicates outside temperature: from red for warm through yellow and green to blue and violet for “it’s freezing outside”.
Lights in my home automation setup may be controlled multiple ways: by a physical switch hardwired to the light, by a button on a UI screen, or by a rule in response to some other events. To keep it simple, I combine the design patterns for Proxy Items,for Groups and for Associated Items. I define rules for the desired behavior at the level of a group, and then assign the lights to that group.
With this setup, the proxy item will always correctly reflect the status of the light, independent of what caused that status (command from a rule, gesture on a physical control, gesture on a UI element).
In part 1 of this series I told you about my objectives for and anticipated benefits of a home automation system. Today, in part 2, I’ll describe what I actually built. Part 3 will look at the real benefits of the system, after several years of use, and share some lessons learned.
I decided to install some IoT equipment as an experiment, primarily to see if/how “home automation” would affect my behavior and decisions in daily life. I am basically using myself as a guinea pig, to study how technology will affect daily routine … and as a nice side effect, I get to dabble in electronics and embedded software!
Let me share with you how I designed and implemented a home automation solution in my house. The focus of these posts is not just on technology, on how I did it, but also on why I did it: what were my objectives? What were the expected vs the real benefits? Are there any lessons learned? This is about sharing my experience in defining and building something, not giving you my opinions on what you should want.
Why am I writing this blog? Over the years, I have benefited from technical knowledge freely shared by others, and from Open Source software in particular. So now I feel…