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SmartHome

Easy to configure & use wireless home automation network including a central station and various low-power nodes.

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This is an easy to configure & use wireless home automation network including a central station and various low-power nodes.
The central station is Raspberry Pi based with custom atmega328 shield, a RFM12b wireless transponder, a RTC module, a 2004 display and a custom mobile-friendly bootstrap web interface. I'm in the process of moving to Node-RED for the low level part.

The communication is 433MHz based but is compatible with 2.4GHz, bluetooth /BLE, X10, internally or using proxy nodes. For now it works with it's own 433MHz open protocol, Jeelib, OpenEnergyMonitor and OOK switches.
The station software also supports network cameras for home security.

Nodes are ATtiny84/ATmega328/ATmega8 based, with low power in mind (still runs on their first 2*AAA batteries, after one year). They include various environmental sensors (temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, etc...), RFID security / lock systems or everything you could think of.

Many details, schematics and code could be found on the project homepage : http://hardware-libre.fr/category/hacks-hwl/reseau-domotique/

Software bits :

  • GNU/Linux (Raspbian)
  • Apache + PHP + MySQL + Twitter Bootstrap
  • imagemagick + php5-imagick + php5-gd
  • xplanet
  • Python + python-uinput + python-smbus + i2c-tools + python-serial + python-psutil + evdev + python-simplejson
  • wiringPi
  • ssmtp + mailutils
  • motion
  • Arduino IDE + inotool

Nodes schematics started with the excellent TinyTX nodes made by Nathan Chantrell

Licences

Each software or library used is under one of these licences :

  • Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
  • GNU General Public License 2 or 3
  • Apache Licence 1.0
  • BSD Licence
  • PHP Licence
  • MIT Licence

Final project may use MIT licence (to be confirmed).

  • 1 × Raspberry Pi Central station main board
  • 2 × ATmega328P-PU Central station / Wireless node micro-controller
  • 3 × ATtiny84A-PU Wireless nodes micro-controller
  • 1 × ATmega8-16-PU Wireless node micro-controller
  • 6 × RFM12B RF433MHz transponder. Present in cetral station and in the nodes

View all 13 components

  • Status update

    Arcadia Labs08/20/2014 at 01:36 0 comments

    To comply with the contest new checkpoint, I added some details :

    • planned improvements in the project log
    • almost complete hardware build instuctions (hosted on the project home page)
    • software bits / libraries

  • Planned improvements

    Arcadia Labs08/20/2014 at 01:17 0 comments

    • Move to Node-RED for the low level part
    • Reworkthe bootstrap user interface, according to Node-RED requirements
    • Build a new enclosure using some transparent plexiglas (as usual) and add some status RGB leds
    • Move the main board to a more powerfull Banana Pi, with a 2.5" SATA hard disk for storage (network cameras images, logs, etc)
    • Build more different nodes. I have many different sensors and microcontrollers to try some combinations.
    • Add some speaker and a microphone for voice control (microphone is allready onboard on the Banana Pi)

    There are still many things to do... But it's very rewarding when everything works as expected...

  • The plan

    Arcadia Labs08/09/2014 at 01:18 0 comments

    The system I designed now works well, and I learned a lot doing everything from scratch, from the electronics circuits to the web interface. Sometimes it was very fun, sometimes it was very frustrating. But learning this way was always challenging, and rewarding.

    However, I think reinventing the wheel is not a good thing. Some parts of SmartHome could work better if they used some proven sources.

    For an example, I want to move the server low-level part to Node-RED project. It will add flexibility ad infinitum, without changing anything to the electronics. Writing python SQL requests from serial input is fun but Node-RED could do it better, with simple scripts.

    This way, I could put my ressources in what is really fun for me : low level stuff, designing new nodes and functions, and designing a user interface.

    On an other side, the central server would be far more useful with some more robust hardware. The Raspberry Pi misses a real SATA connector, this limits the storage capabilities. I don't wan't to rely on SD-card, network drive or USB hard disk. It also misses some computing power to add some multimedia capabilities.

    I want to move to the Banana Pi board, it would be perfect for this use. But the board software is still too young for an intensive use. This is a matter of days/weeks as it's improving very quickly.

  • Pi-bridge custom shield

    Arcadia Labs07/28/2014 at 10:23 0 comments

    Here is the custom shield I built for the SmartHome central station.

    Every Raspberry and ATmega328 pins are broken out, 5v and 3v I²C buses were added, the serial communication could be enabled/disabled with some jumpers, there's also a socket for a optional oscillator and a 3.3v LDO regulator (the ATmega328 actually runs on 3.3v / internal 8MHz).

    The ATmega part could be reprogrammed directly from the Raspberry Pi, acting like a serial / SPI programmer. Ultimately, it will be possible to edit and reprogram the chip from the web interface.

    This board has been especially designed to be built with a perfboard as I have no way to prototype some PCB : 3 weeks wait time is way too much for a prototype, and I don't own (or have access to) a CNC machine.

  • First test videos

    Arcadia Labs07/24/2014 at 23:47 0 comments


    I'm testing some commands from the station web interface to a prototype wireless node. I'm also testing OOK (low cost on/off outlets) commands near the end.


    I'm testing a wireless 2 way security system inside the station web interface.

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Discussions

razorfish_sl wrote 11/11/2014 at 23:05 point
Forget about the Pi.
The U3 is WAY better.
http://www.hardkernel.com/
yep it is a bit more expensive , but you get 2GB ram & 4cpu at nearly 1.8GHz , linux/android actively developed.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Arcadia Labs wrote 11/14/2014 at 18:36 point
I think it is perhaps a bit overkill. Banana Pi seems a better alternative at the moment.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Arcadia Labs wrote 11/14/2014 at 18:35 point
Absolutely ! BPi-R1 is on order, I should have it in a few days...

  Are you sure? yes | no

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