Archive for category Home Automation

Ohm Automation Program

Having taken delivery of my Current Cost energy monitor on Wednesday and after a quick play with the unit itself I was eager to get it hooked up to the computer to get some useful data out of it. A quick Google led me to Dale Lane’s blog. Dale has very kindly published a ready made class library in various languages with methods for reading and parsing the XML spat out at six second intervals by the monitor.

The new Current Cost Envi monitor.

The result of this initial exploration is Ω Automation, a very basic utility I have written in order to relay the Current Cost data from the serial port, display the info on screen and update an XML file on disk for use by an even more basic companion Wordpress plugin. Take a look at the top right of this blog to see the fruits of this labour. There may be periods of no updates when I am using the display away from the computer (Another dedicated unit for Node Zero is on it’s way).

That’s about all it does for now but if anybody has any more suggested functionality then I’ll be keen to hear it. I am intending to rewrite using a combination of the Eclipse, Python and Qt technologies as suggested by gnocchi_ah! in order to make it cross-platform.

One thing I do intend to work with is the xAP protocol so I can push the data to Cortex for use throughout the house. If anybody is interested I will make the source available at a Subversion repository for collaboration.

Whilst planning the home automation project I have come across 2 useful blogs and added them to my blogroll.

JPDW – http://www.jpdw.org/smarthome/
David Gumbrell – http://www.gumbrell.com/archives/home_automation/

Both sites have helped further my knowledge into the Idratek system and have given me ideas for applications I had not thought of.

Having spent the last couple of weeks helping my parents move house I’ve had quite a lot of free thinking time whilst driving to plan the home automation project.

I’ve drafted up a starting list of features I intend to implement in the project. 

 General

• Remote access and monitoring via Internet and phone.

Lighting 

• Mood/Scene Lighting 
• Automated hallway lighting via light-level and PIR sensors. (Possibly other rooms as well depending on how well I can accomodate them)

Climate Control

• Interface with underfloor heating and radiator thermostats and external sensors to compensate for outside conditions.
• System will not heat a room if a window is open.

Security

• Different door chimes when a door is opened for each external door in the house.
• Cameras with automated alerts when alarm in armed state.
• Occupancy Simulation (realistic lighting patterns).

Miscellaneous

• Curtain control linked with lighting. When curtains are closed light turns on. Also curtains should be opened/closed at dawn/dusk.
• “Jumper wearing detection” to fine tune temperature control (OK may be stretching it a bit)

I will also be using Google Sketch-Up to do a very basic plan of the house to start visualising wiring routes and get a feel for the layout of the house, expect this in a later blog entry.