Home Automation Block Diagram
Here is a block diagram of my home automation system showing the various software and hardware interfaces. Click it to view the full image.
Tags: Home Automation, smart home
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This entry was posted by Ian Mercer on March 7, 2010 at 4:32 pm, and is filled under Home Automation, Smartest House. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. No trackbacks yet.
A traffic service that answers “which way should I go?”
about 3 months ago - No comments
Most traffic reports (on the radio or in text message alerts) are fairly useless. Like weather reports they contain lots of irrelevant information that could be eliminated with just a bit of extra context. In fact, most of the information they deliver is completely irrelevant to you as an individual located in one spot and More >
Home Automation Calendar Integration
about 9 months ago - 2 comments
One feature of my home automation system is Google Calendar integration. What this enables is two things: (i) the house can record what happened on the calendar so I can see at a glance what’s been going on back home and (ii) the ability to put events on the calendar for the house to do More >
Smart home energy savings – update for 2010
about 1 year ago - 2 comments
Here’s an updated graph showing the ongoing reduction in energy for our smart home. Driven mainly by continual improvement in the algorithms that control the heating, air conditioning and lighting the overall consumption of gas and electricity has continued to decline throughout 2010. It appears however that I am approaching the limit as to what More >
A smart power strip
about 1 year ago - 1 comment
Recently I added a smart power strip to the TV/Amplifier setup in the living room. My main aim was convenience – to make it easier to turn everything off all at once. But I also wanted to see how much power I could save by eliminating the parasitic power drain that a TV, amplifier and More >
Holiday Season (Christmas) in our Smart Home
about 1 year ago - 1 comment
So what does a smart home do at Christmas time? Well, obviously it controls the Christmas lights, both the ones on the exterior and the ones on the Christmas tree and around the house. The indoor lights come on automatically at dusk and stay on provided the room they are in is occupied. Leave the More >
What does a Smart House do at Halloween?
about 1 year ago - 1 comment
photo credit: madmarv00 At Halloween our home automation system has a few additional and changed behaviors. Here are some of them … 1. When a visiting car comes down the drive the usual alert in the house is replaced with a spooky noise. (Normally the driveway alarm is the gentle tweeting of birds — something More >
If your house could talk to you, what would it say?
about 1 year ago - 2 comments
photo credit: tompagenet Suppose for a minute that your house could talk. What would you want it to tell you? That’s a question I’ve been considering over the past few years because unlike most of you, my house can talk! There are ceiling speakers in many rooms, the house knows which rooms are occupied, and More >
Home Automation Top Features
about 1 year ago - No comments
Someone recently asked me what the top features are in my home automation system. That’s a tough question, I have several favorites and there are so many features in there already or under development. But, here’s a current list of some of my favorites: Lights turn themselves off automatically – saves 40% on electricity usage More >
Passive Air Conditioning to reduce Energy Consumption
about 1 year ago - 3 comments
photo credit: dynamosquito Technology to heat or cool buildings naturally and without expending huge quantities of energy has existed for thousands of years. In Iran this ‘badgir’ has a natural cooling system made with mud bricks and Adobe. It uses the air circulation between two towers passing through a dome refreshed by the flow of More >
Weather Forecasting for Home Automation
about 1 year ago - 1 comment
In the USA we are lucky to have the NOAA and their excellent web service that can provide a detailed weather forecast for any location (specified by latitude and longitude). Using this service my home automation system maintains a detailed, regularly updated local weather forecast object which can be queried easily by any other object More >
about 1 year ago
Your system looks amazing! Is it available? I’d love to be able to use it.
about 1 year ago
Currently none of it is available to anyone else. I’m considering releasing parts of it but lack the time to do that right now. Which bits are most interesting to you? Security panel integration? X10? Multizone music? Natural Language Interface?
about 1 year ago
Right now, X10 and the Natural Language Interface. I’ve been trying to get X10′s software to work, and it’s been less that impressive. I really like the idea of being able to develop against an SDK too. In the future, I want to add HVAC integration for energy savings.
about 1 year ago
What kind of light swtiches/dimmers are you using?
If they are Insteon or Z-wave, how are you interfacing them with the server?
I was thinking of making custom switches/dimmers with ZigBee and the .NET Micro Framework.
Thanks ahead of time!
about 1 year ago
I’ve used a variety of switches over the years. Of the X-10 switches only the Leviton DHC ones have proven to be reliable long term. I have a box full of *Linc and Insteon switches that don’t work any more. The few Z-Wave switches I have seem reliable but without open source drivers I haven’t used them much.
about 1 year ago
Wonderful job=) I am going to take a bit of time to think over the job!
about 11 months ago
Koszonom, hogy egy erdekes blog