The Blog of Ian Mercer.

Certificates for the Microsoft MyDotNetStory competition

I received the certificates for the Microsoft "My DotNet Story" competition today.

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Cover Image for Time Series Data Compression

Time Series Data Compression

This new technique to compress the time series data collected by my home automation system seems to be working really well.

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Home Automation

I've been working on home automation for over 15 years and I'm close to achieving my goal which is a house that understands where everyone is at all times, can predict where you are going next and can control lighting, heating and other systems without you having to do or say anything. That's a true "smart home".

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Home Automation Sensors

An overview of the many sensors I've experimented with for home automation including my favorite under-floor strain gauge, through all the usual PIR, beam and contact sensors to some more esoteric devices like an 8x8 thermal camera.

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Collinearity test for sensor data compression

One way to reduce the volume of sensor data is to remove redundant points. In a system with timestamped data recorded on an irregular interval we can achieve this by removing co-linear points.

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Event blocks

Home automation systems need to respond to events in the real world. Sometimes it's an analog value, sometimes it's binary, rarely is it clean and not susceptible to problems. Let's discuss some of the ways to convert these inputs into actions.

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Logistic function - convert values to probabilities

Another super useful function for handling sensor data and converting to probabilities is the logistic function 1/(1+e^-x). Using this you can easily map values onto a 0.0-1.0 probability range.

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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ATAN curve for probabilities

In a home automation system we often want to convert a measurement into a probability. The ATAN curve is one of my favorite curves for this as it's easy to map overything onto a 0.0-1.0 range.

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Probabilistic Home Automation

A probabilistic approach to home automation models the probability that each room is occupied and how many people are in that room.

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Multiple hypothesis tracking

A statistical approach to understanding which rooms are occupied in a smart house

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for A state machine for lighting control

A state machine for lighting control

An if-this-then-that style rules machine is insufficient for lighting control. This state machine accomplishes 90% of the correct behavior for a light that is controlled automatically and manually in a home automation system.

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Home Automation States

Understanding the many different 'states' a house can have is critical to creating great home automation

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for Graphing gigabytes of home automation data with tableau

Graphing gigabytes of home automation data with tableau

Some interesting charts from the gigabytes of data my home automation system produces

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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iBeacons for Home Automation

My investigations into using iBeacons for home automation

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for iBeacon meetup in Seattle - January 2015

iBeacon meetup in Seattle - January 2015

My notes on the iBeacon meetup in Seattle held in January 2015

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for Home Automation Systems as a Graph

Home Automation Systems as a Graph

Using nodes and links to represent a home and all the devices in it

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for N-Gram Analysis of Sensor Events in Home Automation

N-Gram Analysis of Sensor Events in Home Automation

Using n-gram analysis to spot patterns in sensor activations

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for Xamarin Forms Application For Home Automation

Xamarin Forms Application For Home Automation

Building a Xamarin Forms application to control my home automation system

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for The Internet of Hubs (and things)

The Internet of Hubs (and things)

Maybe it should be called the Internet of Hubs instead

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for Showing home status with just a single RGB LED

Showing home status with just a single RGB LED

Multicolored LEDs can convey a lot of information in a small space

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for A wireless sensor network using Moteino boards

A wireless sensor network using Moteino boards

The diminutive Arduino boards include a powerful transmitter/receiver

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

JSON Patch - a C# implementation

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for The home as a user interface

The home as a user interface

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

A RESTful API for sensor data

POSTing data to a home automation system from Arduino devices

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for The Internet of Boilers

The Internet of Boilers

An experiment to measure every aspect of an HVAC / boiler system

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Dynamically building 'Or' Expressions in LINQ

How to create a LINQ expression that logically ORs together a set of predicates

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

VariableWithHistory - making persistence invisible, making history visible

A novel approach to adding history to variables in a programming language

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for A Quantified House - My Talk to the Seattle Quantified Self Meetup

A Quantified House - My Talk to the Seattle Quantified Self Meetup

My talk to the Seattle Quantified Self meetup

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Updated Release of the Abodit State Machine

A hierarchical state machine for .NET

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Integrating an Android phone into my home automation system

Some new features for my home automation using an Android phone

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Building a better .NET State Machine

A state machine for .NET that I've released on Nuget

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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The Internet of Dogs

Connecting our dog into the home automation

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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GreenGoose Review

A review of the now defunct GreenGoose sensor system

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

A simple state machine in C#

State machines are useful in many contexts but especially for home automation

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Convert a property getter to a setter

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Home power meters revisited

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for Home Automation Calendar Integration

Home Automation Calendar Integration

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Smart home energy savings - update for 2010

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for A smart power strip

A smart power strip

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

MongoDB Map-Reduce - Hints and Tips

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for What does a Smart House do at Halloween?

What does a Smart House do at Halloween?

My favorite home automation features for Halloween

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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Home Automation Top Features

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for Weather Forecasting for Home Automation

Weather Forecasting for Home Automation

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Lengthening short Urls in C#

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
Cover Image for How can I tell if my house is smart?

How can I tell if my house is smart?

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

ASP.NET MVC SEO - Solution Part 1

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Home Automation Block Diagram

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Building sitemap.xml for SEO ASP.NET MVC

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

World's Smartest House Demonstration

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Tip: getting the index in a foreeach statement

A tip on using LINQ's Select expression with an index

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Future proof your home with a new conduit system?

Running conduit can be expensive but maybe you don't need one to every room

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

WCF and the SYSTEM account

Namespace reservations and http.sys, my, oh my!

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

404 errors on IIS6 with ASP.NET 4 Beta 2

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Mixed mode assembly errors after upgrade to .NET 4 Beta 2

Fixing this error was fairly simple

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

The EntityContainer name could not be determined

How to fix the exception "the entitycontainer" name could not be determined

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Shortened URLs should be treated like a Codec ...

Expanding URLs would help users decide whether or not to click a link

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

A great site for developing and testing regular expressions

Just a link to a site I found useful

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Entity Framework in .NET 4

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

System.Data.EntitySqlException

Hints for dealing with this exception

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Exception Handling using Exception.Data

My latest article on CodeProject covers the lesser known Exception.Data property

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

ASP.NET Custom Validation

How to solve a problem encountered with custom validation in ASP.NET

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Optimization Advice

Some advice on software optimization

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Linq's missing link

LinqKit came in handy back in 2009

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Cache optimized scanning of pairwise combinations of values

Using space-filling curves to optimize caching

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer

Threading and User Interfaces

A rant about how few software programs get threading right

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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New Home Automation Server

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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World's Smartest House

Over 15 years of experimentation with home automation

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer
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World's Smartest House Videos

A collection of videos about my smart home efforts

Ian Mercer
Ian Mercer