Thomas W. Lewis produced two excellent projects to remotely control his HVAC system and monitor his home power usage.
He wanted to turn off his HVAC system completely before leaving for an extended period of time, like going on vacation, and then turn it back on just before he gets to his house. Thomas found the controls wires on the thermostat and uses a relay to turn on or off the thermostat. He made it remote controllable with the ioBridge IO-204 module and control widgets placed on a mobile phone.
HVAC and Thermostat Control with the ioBridge IO-204
In additional to remotely being able to shut down his HVAC system, Thomas also monitors his temperature and whole house power using the analog inputs of the IO-204. He used AC clamps around the house power mains to get a power utilization relative to the current through the wires.
Power Monitoring for the Whole House
More details and photos are available on Thomas’ Smart Grid section of his blog.
Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb wrote an article about ioBridge and Matt Morey’s home automation project via Twitter. Matt created a system that allows him to not only get messages from his office, but to control lights and devices using Twitter. He now has a real-time, two-control system for automating some processes at his office using the ioBridge IO-204 monitor and control module.
“ioBridge enables sending data to -- or controlling objects from -- social networks, email, text messaging.”
Thanks to Oprah, Twitter is a household name. You can’t avoid it. But, Twitter uses are starting to flourish thanks to an API and dedicated developers. Matt Morey has developed a two-way, home automation application using Twitter to control lights and LCDs and monitor temperature and light sensors. His app interfaces Twitter with the ioBridge IO-204 by using the PHP Widget Control API.
Follow MattsOffice on Twitter
Matt’s Twitter application allows him to make updates to his Twitter feed and send commands to his IO-204 to turn on lights, send messages to his serial LCD screen, and get temperatures and light sensor readings. He also has a nifty extension that allows you to see a view from his office by sending him a tweet, which takes a snap shot from a digital camera and posts it on TwitPic.
