As many of my friends and family know, I'm mad on trying to automate my house!
This has involved linking as much technology together to provide either remote control, or monitoring for the house in general.
Current *public* house information is shown below (Obviously my alarm, or other sensitive data isn't public!!)
Currently monitored:
Power Consumption (disabled, as I no longer have an LED meter, I have an old spinning disc type)
Front drive webcam
Back Garden webcam
Indoor webcams (x3 one netcam, one wireless composite, one wireless security via composite)
External weather monitor
Study/Computer room Temperature and Humidity Sensor
PC Remote control/power-on
Mains power/UPS monitoring
Internet connection monitoring/usageX10 devices monitoring and control (Living room lighting, Outdoor lighting)IP Power 9212 (Garage outside lighting, heating pump monitoring, alarm system monitoring)
I've written a small perl script which talks to the IP Power via UDP, so can use my linux server to handle the control of it.
The IP Power unit came from Digidave.co.uk
| 21/07/05 | Update - My IPPower was failing, and it seems its because I did a firmware upgrade. DO NOT DO IT! I have been in contact with the manufacturers http://www.aviosys.com/ and they were excellent. They sent me a utility to repair my IPPower9212 unit, and its back up and running. Many thanks to Aviosys, REAL customer support! | | 01/09/05 | Rain sensor failure - The rain sensor has given up again, so i'm not sure if its my botched job at replacing the reed switch with a not-very-compatible one or if its just that the reed switches aren't coping well with the weather. I've ordered a new reed switch from Maplin so when that arrives I'll try and get the sensor back up and running once again. | | 27/09/05 | Wind sensor problems - I'd noticed that wind speeds were very low at times when it was kinda windy outside, so checked the little sensor attached to the shed that monitors this. Unfortunately the blades appeared to me jammed, so after clearing some junk out of the spindle, and a quick blast of WD40 it appears to be OK again, however I'm watching the speeds its giving as I believe it is still running 'low'. | | 16/11/05 | IP Power Developments - I've been doing some more work on PHP and Perl applications to work witht he IP Power units, working with digidave.co.uk. Keep checking back as packages will probably be released at some point! | | 04/03/06 | IP Power 9212 - I have added a sample perl program for communicating with the IP Power 9212 device, since I have been receiving many email requests for this. Please get in touch if you use/try the sample and let me know how you get on. See the link below | 10/04/06
| I've just added some new sensors to our new home. The first one is adding a relay to the heating pump, this allows me to use the IP Port 9212 to monitor its switching on and off, therefore letting me graph the times the heating pump is running. I have also added some outputs to the alarm system. The system I have allows 4 programmable outputs, which I have set to monitor 'alarm', 'armed/disarmed'. These feed into the voltage sensor options on the 9212, as the alarm panel provides +12v upon triggering of the output. The next options to add will possibly be water tank monitoring, garage door/status and anything else I can dream up! If you have a suggestion for me to try, send me a message.
| 29/12/06
| I've purchased a few X10 modules, and controller device. I'm going to document how I've used them, what I've bought, etc as it seemed quite a minefield to get the right modules, software, etc to make things work. In the end I've used basic hardware, a serial port to talk to my server and a combination of opensource and my own software to monitor it all.
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IP Power 9212 sample perl script
Other control devices:
- Power Consumption - Uses a lego mindstorms unit to 'capture' LED flashes on my electricity meter. It then calculates number of flashes per minute which then translates into kilowatt hours. The data is then downloaded to the linux server via infra-red serial cable. (No longer in use, since in the house I live at now I only have a moving disc meter, and so cannot 'capture' the consumption via this. Boo!)
- Front drive webcam - Logitech quickcam, connected via 1 usb hub (to allow up to 5 metre distance), then qcusb for capture. The webcams are controlled by a linux package called motion (http://motion.sourceforge.net) written by Kenneth Lavrson (thanks! its an amazing program). I'm also doing a few extra patches for Motion, which I'll publish here and on Kenneths' site shortly.
- Back Garden webcam - Wireless 'spy-cam' which then links into a DC10 PCI video capture card in the server.
- Indoor webcams - I have one network camera which is an IP Kamera device, which has a mini-webserver and directly connects via CAT5.
- *unpositioned* wireless webcam - A woolworths home security system, uses 2.4Ghz cameras and a small monitor/receiver unit with video output
- Server infra-red remote - A philips MCE remote control, connected via USB hubs (same as webcam) to linux server, and lirc running for command/remote detection
- External weather monitor - A LaCrosse ws-2300 weather station, uses a wireless remote receiver unit with built-in hygrometer, rain sensor and wind speed/direction vane
- Study/Computer room sensor - Via the WS-2300 internal unit, which connects via serial to the linux server for monitoring of both the Internal/External sensors
- PC Remote control/power-on - Wake On LAN via php scripts to trigger the wake-up event
- Mains power/UPS monitoring - Via my APC UPS 2xx pro, connected via APC serial cable to the linux server with apcupsd monitoring
- Internet connection monitoring/usage - MRTG graphs monitoring internal/external ethernet interfaces
- X10 System - My X10 system uses the following components: PCinterface, 3 single-socket switches, one rf interface, one inwall interface. See my dedicated X10 setup page here.
digidave.co.uk supply home automation units, including the IP Power and Wireless webcams.
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Home Automation 