Sections of Home Automated

I'm dividing our Home Automation in these eleven sections:

• wiring,
• x-10 control,
• temperature,
• relay control,
• TV signal,
• telephones & PBX,
• LAN,
• Internet,
• Weather Station,
• Software for Home Automation,
• other connected devices

Maybe this sections are really too much plain and not so specific but I like to keep them that way.

I went through different stages of planning and discovering exciting world of Automation. In the last I've found four things most important for me: can do it by myself, centralized, cheap and KISS (keep it simple, stupid). I'll go through sections but first let's look for an all-inclusive schematic.

Where we Are Now?

And for the second, maybe we should look into what can we do in our Home Automated with all this devices, wires and software.

There is a still lot of potential but ideas running out and this is a list of what we can do with our Home Automated as on September 2006:

• control of mixing valve for Central Heating System through different means and devices,
• control of water pump for Central Heating System,
• measurement of temperature in six different places,
• exact measurement of temperature air pressure, hudmidity, rainfall, wind with Weather Station,
• examination of states of TV Sets, PCs and doors,
• control of different "power" devices - lights, pumps etc.,
• control of telephones, calling, transferring, archiving data from the PBX,
• playing music from the Internet or PCs through the telephones and TV Sets,
• door control,
• sprinkler control,
• sattelite TV signal distribution and other multimedia content,
• connecting all devices together,
• providing Internet to every PC,
• providing strong security through firewall,
• providing access to all devices and all data from the Internet with different devices,
• security webcam,
• providing web services,
• control by RF or IR devices .

The list is long with a lot of features. But this is just what hardware can do. With a little help from the software, we'll see the list will be much longer.

Let's go through the sections now!

Wiring

I beleive there's around 1km of cable in our Home. Mostly UTP category 5 cable. And I was not a spender, I managed to wire telephone and Ethernet on one UTP cable! Still, meters are running all accross the house, in and out. Patching cables is nice work but patch panels tend to bo expensive. And it's just hardware! I've got one very old patch panel from work for network wiring, second patch panel is for telephones, this came included with PBX. Let's say I wired about 100m of RF cable and some 50m of power cable too.

x-10 Control

I bought a starter kit through an Internet from Italy. Waited for package for ages, almost gave up but finnaly package arrived. CK17/7 from nicoshop.com for 254 Eur in fall 2004. x-10 is system for controlling different devices through power line. Very nice and very cabling free but not very reliable. Protocol doesn't have ACK/NACK set of commands so you never know if it's working. It's true that nowadays there's a lot two-way devices and with them you can at least poll the device to see their status. Devices are smaller too and they tend to be little less expensive in Europe than before. In USA this devices are very cheap since they have 110v and not so many regulations. Devices for USA and Europe are totally different and not to be mixed! I found this devices very useful for controlling other devices with controlling their power - up to 2000W.

With a starter kit I've got myself with: 2xLM12 modules for controlling lights with Dim/Bright, 1xAM12 for appliances, 1xTM13 transceiver from RF to powerline, 1xRemote Controller 8in1, 1xLM15 bulb for light, 1xCM11 serial port controller. And that's it. CM11 goes to the computer, one LM12 goes for "internet Lučka", TM13 goes for transceiving RF to powerline, AM12 goes... Hm, where this one went? I completely forgot about this one. I think it's still in the drawer. Updated: huh, I've found this one! Silly me, it is used for a central heating when is operating in summer mode. Just powering on two times per day for hot water.

Temperature

In spring 2004 I bought a temperature kit from www.electronic-kits-and-projects.com/ for - if I remember it right - around 30 pounds. It has four inputs for DS1820 temperature sensors and a serial port feeding computer with data of sensors non-stop. Power goes through serial port. First sensor is for outside temperature, second is in living room, third in Kid's corner and fourth measuring the temperature of water in central heating.

Relay

From the same site as temperature kit I bought also Serial I/O Relay Controller. As name tells everything it's serial input output controller. Here's how it looks (on top of the computer). I think it was around 60 pounds. It has 8 power relays and four digital inputs. I'm using inputs for defining the state in which are other devices - doors and TV sets. Just two relays are used for now. I'm using both for the mixing valve of Central Heating. With them mixing valve is more open or more closed and hot water in the system is within the level of outside temperature. Problems are with timing, computer clock is not exact, so every now and then I loose right position of the mixing valve. So I must do "null positioning" every four hours. Second problem is polling the device to see states of the Inputs. I not very fond of polling since it's not on-line. I can't poll device every 5 sec, computer won't do that. Ok, it would do that but then it wouldn't do anything else...

I've decided for "simple" controlling of the mixing valve after I've played around with "immediate variable positioning" of the valve. It means that you have three temperatures: outside, inside and temperature of heating water. All three are connected. Heating water is always in connection with outside temperature (heating curve on the picture) which is usually implemented with diferential regulator. This is all ok for now but what when temperature in i.e. living room reaches temperature you've set? You must close the heating valve or even shut down the water pump. But Central Heating system is very slow, water is slowly cooling, in fact heating water temperature is still rising after you've shut down everything. So my system went up and down like a crazy horse and it wasn't useful at all. The ideal system will be just straight line, not a sinusoide! Maybe with more complex and sophisticated programming I could reach this point but I didn't see the point. So I went for simple programming, predefined angles of mixing valve, tested temperature of heating water for days and finally got myself a nice working system. Which is working for two winters for now with just minor problems. Yes, I confess, I'm proud of It!

TV signal

We have three television sets in our Home, one is in living room, one in Kid's corner and a very little one is in the basement. I started from position that We should monitor our Automated Home from TV sets also. Television is very simple to use and manage. Unfortunatelly it's just one-way. But this will be solved later. So I lay down some RF cables to TVs, put three antennas under the roof and get myself an antenna amplifier from usual standing antenna (+36Db!) . Standing antenna is ten times cheaper than channel amplifiers. For the Computer I used an old PCI TV-out card with 800x600 pixels, connected this to an old and broken VCR and connected everything together. And it works. On each TV set I used channel 6 for our Home Programm and voila! We can monitor Home Automated from TVs and listen to the music which is played by Home Automation.

Telephones & PBX

I always wanted to have a PBX system! Nice telephones with all that functions! Oooa! I grabbed first chance for it when I saw an used PBX on the Internet. Spent app. 800 USD for a Panasonic KX-TD1232 complete with 17 telephones, additional 16SLC lines, two ISDN BRI lines, surge protection (on the right wall) and a patch panel. It has almost everything you like, missing just ethernet port. It connects through serial port to the Home Automation Computer and it's even third party CTI! That one I discovered one year later and then quickly implemented calling, logging and everything else which is supported by CTI. Very nice. Did I mentioned that we could listen to the same music in telephones as played on Home Automation Programm? As you probably know if you're using some kind of PBX, this PBX also have a door opener which we also use. I even managed to build a function where you can open the doors from the Internet or, even better, from the mobile phone! Just open not unlock, don't panic. It the doors are locked, they're locked. You need a key anyway.

This PBX is really one helluva piece of equipment. You can spend day and nights programming it. Everything could be programmed, telephones too and there's billions of choices and features. I'll never use all of them, life is too short. You just have to get hands on a Panasonic Dealer programm, with which you can do everything from the PC. And you need a tons of literature and users/porogramming/technical guides. But on the end it's just a device and we, people learn fast. In three months it's familiar thing, just like your TV or VCR.

LAN (Local Area Network)

What can I say about LAN? LAN is pretty easy thing when wiring is done. In every case you end with a shortage of connection points around the house. In EVERY case, so don't even try too hard. Just like power... always extenders everywhere. Our Home have 16 connection points but just 8-port 10/100 Mb/s switch. Just enough for now. Everything is connected to this switch in a star topology. Unfortunately I'm not ready for 1Gb since I have a lot of UTP cables combining telephone (4 wires) and Ethernet 10/100 (4 wires). 1Gb/s needs 3 pairs, 6 wires.

Internet

Will continue! We're still in construction. Sorry. It's a lot of text, you know...

Last modified: 15. Sept 2006