What is Home Automated?
Home Automated is a web site, where I try to get our Home to be more or less smart. Which is not very easy task since it is old and grumpy. With a lot of time and persuasion but with a smallest amount of money possible, after two years I managed to push our Home to be the smartest Home around. At least in our neighborhood.
Home Automation in 2006? Still not here, huh? Maybe a little closer but still expensive, at least for my pocket. Controllers, sensors, wiring and software. All of them takes quite a money and I never could afford myself such a spending. But since I was always very interested in Home Automation I decided to give it a try.
| Home, which knows more! |
Helena and I bought our Home in 2003, an 80-year old house. Why we went nuts for an 80-year old house with a lot of repairs to do? We still don't know exactly why. We think it has something to do with the soul which all old houses have. Anyway, we're not sorry, actually we're enjoying our Home at most. It's lovely, it's spacious, it has peace, It's right enough for six of us. And a cat.
I started Automating our Home with wiring, bought some not expensive controllers, wrote some software and off we go. Ok, it's not that easy, it went very slowly ahead with a lot of problems. It takes me a lot of investigation and searching for the right devices. Thanks to the Internet, this is an easy job to do but still very time consuming.
Sections of development.
After three years I could divide automation in our Home in eleven sections:
- wiring,
- x-10 control,
- temperature,
- relay control,
- TV signal,
- telephones & PBX,
- LAN,
- Internet,
- Weather Station,
- Software for Home Automation,
- other connected devices
I wrote something about every section and added a schematic diagram of wiring and devices here.
Data
So, why "Home, which knows more"? Here's the list of all data gatehered ON-LINE from our Home Automated:
| Software Version for HA | |
| Date/Time | |
Weather-Astronomical Data |
|
| Weather Station Outside Temp | °C |
| Weather Station Inside Temp | °C |
| Temp 1 Outside | 0 °C |
| Temp 2 Living Room | 0 °C |
| Temp 3 Kid's corner | 0 °C |
| Temp 4 Heating system | 0 °C |
| Pressure | hPa |
| even/raising/falling | |
| rain/clouds/sun | |
| Humidity Outside | % |
| Humidity Inside | % |
| Wind Speed | km/h |
| Wind Direction | °, |
| Dew Point | °C |
| Wind Chill | °C |
| Rain Last Hour | |
| Rain Last 24 hours | l/m2 |
| Sunrise | |
| Sunset | |
| Day is | |
| Moonrise | |
| Moonset | |
| Moon Phase | ° at h |
| Moon is | % |
| Next Moon Phase | |
| Next Moon Phase | |
Internet |
|
| Messages/users/online on Forum |
|
| Number of meesages on Lučka/Music Wish | |
Devices |
|
| Mitja's PC | |
| Tadeja's PC | |
| My PC | |
| TV Living room | |
| TV Kid's corner | |
| Basement doors | |
| Service 1 | |
| Service 2 | |
| Relay 1 | |
| Relay 2 | |
Central Heating |
|
| Position | |
| Working Mode | |
| User mode | |
| User mode - how long? | |
| Internet mode | |
| Override all modes | |
| Water Pump | |
| CKU | |
| Valve Left(L)-Wait(C)-Right(D) | |
| Zero Positioning | |
X-10 Devices |
|
| Internet Lučka (Light from Inet) | |
| 2 | |
| 3 | |
| Sprinkler | |
| Light Bulb | |
| Heating/Water Pump | |
| 7 | |
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
Telephones (PBX) |
|
| Last Event | |
| Missed Calls | |
Other |
|
| Now Playing (total/playing) | |
| Music Wish? | |
| No. of measurements of Temp - 1/2h |
|
In my humble opinion it's quite impressive list of gathered data. Specially for an 80-year old house. And if I'm honest, I'm proud of it! Don't forget, this thing is alive and it's changing all the time. I'm adding new features and new devices, I'm doing a lot of researching. But in the end, the thoughest part is just knowing WHAT you want. WHAT is real challenge, How and Where are just a matter of time, money and work.
I went in this project mainly because I was angry with all Home Automation circling around lights and lights and lights. OMG, Home Automation is not just lights and your video stream from living room to bedroom. It's a lot more. And path is long, very long.
What next?
For now I'm stuck in my Web development and I'm planning new things for this winter. I've met a person very capable of electronics and we had some ideas of cheap controllers and other devices. As I can see, the Winter will be long... :)