Home Control Ideas

I've got to thinking about home control again. Home control with sensors should be a breeze in the 21st century, unfortunately its not - and its expensive. For now I think home control will still be in the realm of the hobbyist, but we should try to make it easier in increments.

X-10 is a great starter home control system. X-10 is safer than wiring up your own relay boards, and extends the range of your control. Its disadvantages are its slowness and its reliability, there are sites that say that X-10 signals have trouble sometimes getting to their destinations. That being said it should not discourage you to try out this protocol, because you can get most of what you want done with this protocol. It's the 80-20 solution to home control.

I think X-10 can be greatly augmented with Arduino, python, and google. Motion detection to turn on the lights in an area, to turn on fans if a room gets to hot, or just turn on the coffee maker using your TV remote control are all possible. You can send data to a website on google, or download behavior instruction from your site to show how your home should act when your away.

I'm going to use one of my arduino protoboards to connect to a X-10 module and see if I can control my lights from my computer, after that I'll try to control of a fan based off the temperature of the room. After getting the prototype completed, I'll set up a pcb and make a few for the whole of my house.

Cheapest Data Logger Yet

I always come up with ideas that have absolutely no commercial value. I came up with an idea to link arduino, to firmata, to python, to google spreadsheet, to google gadgets. The end result is a data logger that you can monitor from your homepage. All its going to take is a relatively small python script. The uses are pretty much any beginning arduino user, or perhaps someone who wants a really cheap sensor network.

I'm going to:

1. Get up and running on googles data api and just try to do some simple data manipulation.
2. Get arduino programmed with firmata, and get my hands on an lm-35 sensor.
3. Write a tkinter script to upload readings.
4. Create a dumb web page to show temperature readings from my apartment.

I have yet to talk about http://foodator.appspot.com, the new web app I wrote using google's app engine. It collects recipies, and generates menu's randomly so you don't have to think about what to make. It was sort of medium difficulty to make, but not too hard. I'm worried that few people will use it, but I know that I will use it. Its alot easier to use the web than run a script from a dos box. So whenever I need a small useful program, I'm just going to upload it to google app engine. That way I can share it with my friends.

Dvorak:
The best way to practice your dvorak typing is to blog.

What I'm leaving

I'm moving in the next few weeks. The place is a live work complex that hasn't taken off. It reminds me of what this country is like. The place is leaking and empty, while there's all this nice paint and drywall making it look OK on the inside. At night there's so much noise that you can't sleep. And to top it all off, its way too expensive.

So I'm Moving. Not out of the county though, but I am worried. I'm worried that most people don't understand the current economic crisis.