Home automation has a lot of meanings. For some home automation is about hitting a button on a large remote control that starts up the fire place. For others, it may be remotely checking on your house via your phone, turning on lights, or controlling your heating and cooling system. And, home automation might also mean energy and resource management like power monitoring or water metering. The great news for us is that there are many ways to get started with home automation -- you don’t have to tackle all of the possibilities all at once -- many neat things you can do.
A video on YouTube surfaced describing some home brew home automation by Andy Leer. Andy walks us through a very useful home automation project to control and monitor his garage door. His setup includes an ioBridge IO-204 in which he has multi-purposed for many projects including some home automation with X10, monitoring temperature, and controlling fighting robots with his iPhone.
Andy not only wanted to control his garage door opener, but he also wanted to know whether the garage door was opened or closed. Using one of the channels on the IO-204 he connected a magnetic reed switch acting as a sensor to determine if the garage door was opened or closed.
Andy has more ideas for some home automation projects. He mentions in the video that he will be monitoring the status of his washer and dryer to email him when his laundry is ready.
What happens when you get together 6 people, a banana suit, and some hardware? You get a really creative project known as the LED Wall. The crew built a giant LED Wall made up of a matrix of 350 LEDs. Over a weekend they painstakingly soldered and glued the lights to a pegboard and connected them together using MAX6953 LED driver chips. The result was a matrix of LEDs that they could control by turning each LED on and off like pixels. They took that a step further and connected the LED Wall to the Internet via the ioBridge IO-204. With a web interface, anyone can draw their own messages and send them to the LED Wall with a web browser. You can see your messages being displayed by watching the live video feed on LED Wall website. So far, 119700 pixels have been sent to the LED Wall through the web — everything from “Hello World” to Mario and Space Invaders have been submitted.
"Hello World" on the LED Wall
You can draw your own images on the LED Wall yourself and also look through other people’s messages by visiting the project website at wall.elnormo.net. If you visit the project site, you will also see how they created the LED Wall. Here’s a time-lapsed video of the project build.
Here’s a scenario seemingly from the future. Imagine a world of connected things, lets call it the Internet of Things. There are lots of useful data around us in our environment. There are lots of useful things we may want to know about and may want to interactive with remotely (in a different space and time). If every thing had a voice, there would be a lot of data to collect and to make meaningful. If we can do it, we would be connected to our environments.
This is not as far off as it sounds. The ioBridge Platform was created to make it easy to connect anything to the web, store data from sensors, relay data to other networks, and present the data on websites. People are already creating very interesting projects, products, and services on top of the platform. And everyday we are surprised by the diversity of the projects.
The Internet Doorbell
Now joining the Internet of Things…The Doorbell. The Internet Doorbell project is by Jason Garland. He created a super easy project that connects his doorbell live to Twitter or really any social network via Ping.fm and ioBridge push services. The instant someone presses his doorbell, the doorbell updates the input status on the ioBridge IO-204 and pushes the message to ioBridge and Ping.fm which updates Twitter (@jgarland79). This is a first step, just think of where it could take you. One day your doorbell gets pressed, you get notified, and you start up a voice-over-IP session with your intercom system. You could interact with (or annoy) your visitor from anywhere in the world.
Check out Jason’s blog for more details on the Twittering Doorbell and other very interesting projects. We also noticed a web-enabled water meter updating water usage.
On a related project, one of our Maker Faire projects this year was the “transcontinental doorbell” – involving two IO-204s linked together. When the doorbell button at one site is pressed it rings a doorbell 2000 miles away in less than 300ms.
Rogier Honselaar is a tech consultant in Germany. He wanted to be able to control a cat door remotely and also be notified when his cat came home.
"Gonzo" loves his automated cat door
As with most projects, Rogier started searching the Internet and found some interesting projects. He got the idea to combine some of his favorite projects and make a remotely controlled cat door and alert system for his cat, “Gonzo”.
When the idea was there, the execution was very easy using the IObridge module and components.
Rogier installed a Cat Mate Cat Door in his basement. The cat door opens when the electromagnet senses a magnet in the cat’s collar. By running the sensor and switch over the the ioBridge IO-204, Rogier can be open and close the door remotely. He is also able to monitor when the cat comes in and out of the door. The messages get pushed to Ping.fm via the IO-204 and ioBridge web service. Rogier and his neighbor follows his cat on Twitter @fellnasegonzo to make sure Gonzo is home safe and sound.
Cat Mate Automated Cat Door
Cat Door Switch and Sensor
At ioBridge.com, Rogier created a few control and monitor widgets. With some help from a friend, he controls and reads the widgets via a net-connected Windows Mobile app on his cellphone and can open and close the cat door on his Windows Home Server.
Windows Mobile Cat Door Control App
Windows Home Server Interface
Thanks for sending us the project details – we are happy to share. You combined some very interesting things together and created a very useful project. We wish you and Gonzo well and hope you enjoy the new cat door! Who let the cat out? Meow.
Steve (aka Polymythic) created a Motion Feedback MP3 Player that plays music tracks at varying volume depending on the level of activity the system detects. The concept is to encourage more activity by creating a feedback loop between the volume of music and the level of your activity.
Motion Feedback MP3 Player
Motion is detected with a Parallax PIR Sensor. When motion is detected, the output pin of the sensor goes high. That out is monitored by the ioBridge IO-204. With or without a network connection, the IO-204 sets the volume of a DIY MP3 Trigger board from SparkFun. The volume is controlled by sending serial strings to the MP3 Trigger. Steve took advantage of the new Onboard Rules that turn the IO-204 into a standalone controller. When the IO-204 is connected to the Internet, the IO-204 also data logs his activity by sending it to the ioBridge data logging service in the cloud.
Any good SkyNet starts with a robot. Well, we are in luck…User “badcat89″ posted in our forum about a Web-enabled, Wireless Robot that is controlled via a web interface. We can imagine a swarm of robots controlled by data received from the web.
Web Powered Robot
The robot uses a pair of serial bluetooth adapters to form a wireless link with the ioBridge IO-204. The serial levels of the IO-204 are TTL and a circuit using the MAX-232 was required to allow the serial interface work properly. On the robot is a set of serial servo drivers that control the steering and speed.
IO-204 and Serial Bluetooth Adpater
The interface is standard web page using an embedded ioBridge.com serial widget to make the connection to the IO-204 base station module. You can control the direction and throttle by clicking on the itnerface and using the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard. The interface generates serial strings that the serial servo drivers react to when received. You can see the strings and the serial widget in the debug part of the web interface.
Web-based Robot Controls
Here is a YouTube video of the web powered robot in action -- looks like a lot of fun to drive. One step closer…
Eric Edwards of EJESolar.com created a system that takes solar energy and heats water for his home. He uses Sun Strip Solar panels to heat the water. With a single solar panel Eric is able to heat a 60 gallon tank to temperatures beyond 160°F. He uses the ioBridge IO-204 to data log and actively monitors the water heating system by getting alerts and updates on his mobile phone.
Water Tank and ioBridge IO-204
ioBridge IO-204 with Temperature Sensors
Eric monitors and data logs the temperatures of the the hot water storage tank, the collectors, and the outside temperature in real-time using the ioBridge IO-204 and temperature sensors. This data allows Eric to calculate BTUs collected per day and translate into a dollar figure to track savings. He has surrounded himself with the data to make sure there is no system damage, freezing, etc., by creating a web site to view the data, setting ioBridge message alerts, and using a Google Gadget to display the temperatures collected by the IO-204.
Visit EJESolar.com to see a live view of the data collected by the solar hot water system as well as some more details behind this solar hot water heating system. Ingenious!
Screen Shot of Solar Array and Collected Data (EJESolar.com)
Have you ever wanted to keep track of your fussy chickens? Watch them, listen to them, monitor their temperature? This project is beyond home automation, it’s Coop Automation.
ioBridge user known as “Automatr” posted in the ioBridge Forum about his project to automate his chicken coop so he could watch, listen, and monitor the chicken’s environment 24/7 from anywhere in the world via the web.
Coop Automation - Live Video and Audio
This is the first chicken cam for sure. The project is very well done. Complete with a day/night infrared web cam, microphone, automatic door, light sensor, temperature sensor, and the ioBridge IO-204 connecting the project to the Internet for remote monitoring. Automatr can track temperature, light levels, listen in, and watch his chickens on his dedicated website, FussyChickens.com. He also gets messages posted to him when his automatic coop door opens and closes.
If you want to tune in and watch/listen to the chicken coop, head over to FussyChickens.com where there is a live audio and video stream from uStream.
Thanks for sharing your coop with us. These chickens are not getting away with anything now.
Christmas lights are one way to celebrate the holidays. If you want to take the tradition further, why not web-enable your your xmas lights and let the world watch, control, and interact via the Internet. A couple of ioBridge users did just that -- they took their holiday lights to Griswold levels.
Nathan Kennedy of Pacific Lights and Kennedy Technology has created an interactive display of reindeer and Christmas Star stakes covered in Christmas lights. You can watch his display all the way from New Zealand and switch them on or off on his website. He uses the ioBridge IO-204 connected to an arduino to control the lights on his website. It’s lots of fun controlling someone else’s holiday display.
Christmas Lights Controlled via a Web Page
Noel Portugal of Oracle has created an interactive holiday lights display using a mix of technologies. The result is Christmas lights synchronized to songs that are selectable on a web page, www.xmas-box.com. Inside the box are solid-state relays to control the lights, an Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit, and of course, the ioBridge IO-204 module to add some interactivity to his website. Noel details the procedure to create your very own Christmas Light Controller Box on Instructables.com and on his blog. On a related note, Noel also won third-place for his Dropping Spider ioBridge project featured on Instructables this Halloween! His neighbors must love him!
We found out what happens when you place two lovable toys against each other. They attack!
Hack Pittsburgh member Andy Leer created an interactive toy fight featuring Domo and Munny squaring off. You get to control one of the characters and watch the battle via a webcam live. Move over “Internet of Things” - make way for the “Internet of Vengeful Toys”.
Munny vs. Domo
The Munny and Domokun are attached to servos. The servos are connected to the ioBridge servo controller and IO-204. You control the toys with servo slider widgets. Andy’s blog mentions that the next version will have iPhone support. Visit his blog to play and sweep the leg at the Domo Dojo.
