Saturday, August 9, 2014

Home Automation


I want to be able to turn on and off lights and power outlets in my house. 



Also using this solution I will be able to turn on and of my desktop PC, control download station, and a basic video surveillance solution. Basically I can add almost any functionality in terms of digital control.

Required tools and equipments:





The Controller box(Raspberry Pi) is connected to internet via the Router. Also desktop PC is connected to the same router. Controller is running software that is able to send commands to turn on or off these power outlets. In my demo I used some lamps to demonstrate how the solution works.

The software that runs on controller offers an interface with on/off buttons that can switch the power outlets and other commands also(for example turn on/off the HomePC/NAS)

The actual solution





Above you can see control panel of the software that is running on Raspberry Pi. It can be accessed using a web browser. It can be accessed by any device connected to internet. It supports also authentication.

I added the options to turn on/off lights (ambient light, desk light and big lamp), option to turn off/on all lights in one click and also start/stop NAS station (NAS=network attached storage). I added option to start a Download Station (this a software that is running on my NAS - Transmission Daemon) and video surveillance software (Motion).

The software is configured to automatically start all lights when I cam home after 8 PM. When my wifi router detects that my phone is connected it will power on my lamps if time is past 8 PM.

How? 

Using OpenWRT I have access to DHCP server configuration on my router.When a new device gets an IP address a script is started. This script checks for current day time and if time is past 8PM it will send the command to turn on all my lights. At 23:50 all the lights will be turned off automatically.




Next:

This is work in progress. I plan to add more features to controller:

  • light sensor / temperature sensor
  • automatically weather report based on internet existent web services (i.e Accuweather)
  • door/windows sensors
  • bluetooth door looker support
  • automatic garage door open (if I will have one :D)
  • wireless motion sensor - Controller will send notifications when motion sensors will trigger
  • wireless gas/fire detection sensor support - Controller will send notifications when motion sensors will trigger
  • option to read electric/gas meter or any other indicator from different devices (i.e remote reporting) 





No comments:

Post a Comment