Following on from my last post about my DIY Intruder Alarm, I thought I’d post about another wee device I’ve hooked up to it, a Smoke/Combustible Gas/Carbon Monoxide detector that’s WiFi capable, for about $5. Continue reading “$5 WiFi enabled Smoke/Gas Detector”
DIY Intruder Alarm System
Over the past few months, I’ve been building a DIY Intruder Alarm, so here’s a brief overview of it’s layout and functionality. It’s based on a Raspberry Pi, but there’s nothing to say that it couldn’t be based on any single board computer with an adequate number of GPIO inputs, Up-board, Minnowboard, Beaglebone, etc.
Laser-cut face-plate for Heating System
As I’ve learned while doing home automation, it’s important for the finished project to look good, especially if it’s in a location that can be seen. 🙂
So when I was building the home-heating controller (as described here), I decided to finish it off with a laser-cut face-plate.
Wifi Home Heating Oil Monitor
This bit of Home Automation has been on my list for a long time. I usually find out that the home heating oil (kerosene) has run out when an orange light is illuminated on my boiler. At that stage, we’ll probably be without heating in the house for a day or two. So, I was looking at ways to measure the level of home oil in the tank that would give me a constant level indicator, and also not break the bank.
DIY Smart Home Heating Control System
I finally bit the bullet and uninstalled the Nest Thermostat that I got a couple of months ago. I was not happy with it’s ability to keep my house at a stable temperature. There was also the problem of the circulation pump feeding the heated water to the radiators (covered elsewhere on this blog).
3D-Printed Wall Mount for Home Automation Console
I got a Kindle Fire HD6 for a really great price from Amazon.co.uk on Black Friday, which I’m using as a console for my Home Automation system. I though it’d be nice to have it mounted in a convenient location in the house. In this article I describe the design of a 3D-Printed wall mount for it, and I even supply the STL file as an attachment so you can print it yourself!
Continue reading “3D-Printed Wall Mount for Home Automation Console”
Nest Thermostat problems (and how I’m working around them)
I got a Nest Thermostat recently and it was installed (for free) by my Electricity Supply company. Initial reactions were good, however as time goes on, I’m less and less happy with it. This article covers my initial attempts at getting around some of it’s shortcomings, and future articles will cover more.
Continue reading “Nest Thermostat problems (and how I’m working around them)”
Indoor Sensor Hub Experimentation
I’ve recently been playing a lot with temperature humidity sensors, and a little bit with smoke gas sensors and PIRs (motion sensors), as well as WeMos D1 Mini ESP8266 based MCUs.
Encrypted 433MHz links using RFM69’s
I recently had the need to have a doorbell at the entrance to my property, having recently put in automated gates. I could have run a cable, but I wanted to try out some new 433 MHz transceivers I recently purchased. The entrance would have a push-button switch and the house would have a receiver accepting packets from the entrance. Once it got a packet, it would trigger a relay to ring the doorbell. The doorbell was an old model, driven by 12V AC, so I thought a relay would be the handiest way to triggger it’s chime. Also, attached to the internal Arduino would be the old doorbell, connected to a gpio input which could also trigger the relay, activating the doorbell. Two methods to chime the same doorbell.
Add 3 USB ports and an Ethernet Port to Intel Edison / Raspberry Pi Zero for $3.20
I’ve been a user of many Single Board Computers for a while now, and I always like to have the option of plenty of USB ports and and Ethernet port. I recently came across these devices, which combine 3 full-sized USB ports AND an ethernet port in the one device, terminate by a micro USB connector.