10002 Short assembly run no 2

Intro It is quite clear that my smart home project is going quite slow and erratic. Following the other assembly, I made another batch of 5 sensor nodes. These are meant to use the new soil sensors, once they arrive. Since plants will be both outside and inside and we are talking about rain and water, the sensors will go into waterproof boxes, with the soil sensor connected via a cable. So, this assembly is due… Continue reading

10002 Control panel horror

Intro I have been making some slow progress with my smart home project. I have completed a small assembly run of motion sensors, there are plenty of things that are working and I shifted some focus on making a control panel. What I normally want is a control interface that works well from both a PC and a phone. Bonus if it can look nice on a tablet to have one real control panel on… Continue reading

10002 Short assembly run

Brief progress It is quite clear that my smart home project is going quite slow. It is not that I spent a lot a time on it, but that I have been pretty busy with other life things. But it is moving again now. Check out another batch of assembly. Motion sensors assembly Once I settled on the type of motion sensor and case, I designed some sensor PCBs . I made a small assembly… Continue reading

10002 Motion sensors?

Motion sensor madness Picking the right one for my smart home project is not trivial. From left to right – Osram Nightlux, Ikea Molgan, Ebay sensors with sensitivity and timing adjusment (BISS001), smaller ebay sensor with no adjustment, another ebay sensor. As you can see I have looked at 2 different options: use a ready made sensor and fit it with a radio, or build my own. Ikea Molgan I hacked one a while ago –… Continue reading

10002 Temperature sensors?

Intro There is no doubt, that integrated temperature and humidity sensors are the way to go at the moment for my smart home project. I had quite a bit of look at a wide range of sensors and settled for the SI7021. Silabs has a bigger family – most likely the same chip binned on precision – so here are cheaper options to use if I ever want to go for an application that can do with… Continue reading

10002 Progress

This article is part of my 1000² Smart Home project. Check out the Architecture and Software and then move on to Hardware. An most importantly, check the Lessons learned and why I did what I did. There are already some first results, connecting all parts of the system. Progress Finally, enough pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together in my Smart Home project, so that I can have some end to end functionality: press a button here… Continue reading

10002 Architecture and Software

This article is part of my 1000² Smart Home project. Check out the Architecture and Software and then move on to Hardware. An most importantly, check the Lessons learned and why I did what I did. There are already some first results, connecting all parts of the system. Starting with a top down approach – what the system should do, it soon became clear that some devices will be custom and some will be off the shelf. Determining… Continue reading

10002 Software

This article is part of my 1000² Smart Home project. Check out the Architecture and Software and then move on to Hardware. An most importantly, check the Lessons learned and why I did what I did. There are already some first results, connecting all parts of the system. Intro There is plenty of software to use in home automation, but of course I decided to stay with open source and free options. In recent years there have been… Continue reading

10002 Hardware

This article is part of my 1000² Smart Home project. Check out the Architecture and Software and then move on to Hardware. An most importantly, check the Lessons learned and why I did what I did. There are already some first results, connecting all parts of the system. Some history A picture says 1000 words!* *inner voice dependent Which microcontroller? When I began this project, I was long given up on the ATMega and ATTtiny micro, with some… Continue reading

10002 Lessons learned

This article is part of my 1000² Smart Home project. Check out the Architecture and Software and then move on to Hardware. An most importantly, check the Lessons learned and why I did what I did. There are already some first results, connecting all parts of the system. What? This page covers things I have learned and why I did what I did in my 1000² project. Some experience, random calculations, opinions and thoughts. Battery philosophy So what… Continue reading