Hi,
Been browsing here for several years but until now haven't registered. With all the cool things happening in Home Automation at the moment I'd like to participate in the discussions here - IoT is creating a lot of attention (& hype), interesting projects on kickstarter (eg. Ninja Sphere - recently defunct though) and cool products like Amazon Echo.
My system
I have a home brew system developed over the last 8 years. Initially I was going to purchase Charmed Quark's system but I didn't like the approach to scripting with a proprietary language, and as a software developer (mostly Microsoft) and with a hardware background, I thought using some of the industry standard toolsets would be a better and more flexible approach (like .NET, Visual Studio, Node.JS etc.). So I started building up my system and after several iterations and a lot of learning, the current system is based on HTML5 widget based UI (desktop & mobile) talking websockets to a .NET message based server with a Node.JS plug-in device driver manager, supporting REST, sockets, websockets, MQTT and uses Microsoft Azure for access from the internet.
Screenshots
Here is one of the screens from the HTML5 dashboard - weather portal example (data from a weather station as well as info provided by a local internet weather feed like rain radar)
=> see screenshots below, wasn't allowed to add screenshots as a new member.....
Here is a screenshot of the design surface used for the HTML5 dashboard. Apart from the top & bottom status bars, everything else on the screen is user definable with widget based drag/drop, re-sizing and channel definition that makes for a very simple and flexible UI. Creating new widgets is also simple if you know HTML5/javascript and they can be very functional (eg. the graph widget based on D3 can do zoom and panning for scrolling or drilling into data with standard touchscreen gestures).
=> see screenshots below, wasn't allowed to add screenshots as a new member.....
Here is a screenshot of one of the settings screens, where triggers/events can be setup, data transformations to create virtual devices, time series visualisations, editing of UI widgets or device drivers in .NET or JavaScript (device drivers have access to the automation framework functions using standard javascript, with driver features exposed for user actions or administration via metadata configuration settings).
=> see screenshots below, wasn't allowed to add screenshots as a new member.....
Sensors
Are ethernet based using PIC microcontrollers that talk to the server over MQTT TCP/IP and derive power over Ethernet (using PoE).These include IO modules (eg. for gate control, motion sensors) and more sophisticated sensors like an ultrasound tank level sensor. Sensors use a software PIC framework using the cheap PIC18F66J60 chips and have a small master module that handles the power and TCP/IP communication and expose GPIOs via headers so any type of sensor can be built around them (eg. bluetooth modules). Similar to arduino but more purpose built - next iteration of the sensor platform will include a small webserver with a web based console to program sensor functionality using the TINYBASIC language. I'm also working on (but not ready yet) a smarter sensor platform using raspberry pi and Windows 10 IoT for more sophisticated functions like speech recognition, touchscreen, audio etc.
Hackaday project blog
Automated
I have automated my front gates (which can also detect who is opening), all house lights on C-BUS (eg. home theater scenes, 'all lights off' button etc.), weather station, power monitoring & solar power inverter (eg. the data transformation engine calculates real time how much energy I'm saving and getting paid by the electricity company), IP camera motion detection and real time and history viewing in the browser, event history for graphing temperature or energy (or whatever) trends over time and a whole lot more.
I have ended up with a lot of automation and a not perfect (or fully complete) but what I still consider to be a pretty sophisticated system with the main features seen in most good automation systems and a number of unique ideas I have not seen elsewhere. If anyone is interested I can share more details, I have some of the code up on github.
I can't post links or add screenshots to show you more of my system - if an admin relaxes my account I'll post.
Been browsing here for several years but until now haven't registered. With all the cool things happening in Home Automation at the moment I'd like to participate in the discussions here - IoT is creating a lot of attention (& hype), interesting projects on kickstarter (eg. Ninja Sphere - recently defunct though) and cool products like Amazon Echo.
My system
I have a home brew system developed over the last 8 years. Initially I was going to purchase Charmed Quark's system but I didn't like the approach to scripting with a proprietary language, and as a software developer (mostly Microsoft) and with a hardware background, I thought using some of the industry standard toolsets would be a better and more flexible approach (like .NET, Visual Studio, Node.JS etc.). So I started building up my system and after several iterations and a lot of learning, the current system is based on HTML5 widget based UI (desktop & mobile) talking websockets to a .NET message based server with a Node.JS plug-in device driver manager, supporting REST, sockets, websockets, MQTT and uses Microsoft Azure for access from the internet.
Screenshots
Here is one of the screens from the HTML5 dashboard - weather portal example (data from a weather station as well as info provided by a local internet weather feed like rain radar)
=> see screenshots below, wasn't allowed to add screenshots as a new member.....
Here is a screenshot of the design surface used for the HTML5 dashboard. Apart from the top & bottom status bars, everything else on the screen is user definable with widget based drag/drop, re-sizing and channel definition that makes for a very simple and flexible UI. Creating new widgets is also simple if you know HTML5/javascript and they can be very functional (eg. the graph widget based on D3 can do zoom and panning for scrolling or drilling into data with standard touchscreen gestures).
=> see screenshots below, wasn't allowed to add screenshots as a new member.....
Here is a screenshot of one of the settings screens, where triggers/events can be setup, data transformations to create virtual devices, time series visualisations, editing of UI widgets or device drivers in .NET or JavaScript (device drivers have access to the automation framework functions using standard javascript, with driver features exposed for user actions or administration via metadata configuration settings).
=> see screenshots below, wasn't allowed to add screenshots as a new member.....
Sensors
Are ethernet based using PIC microcontrollers that talk to the server over MQTT TCP/IP and derive power over Ethernet (using PoE).These include IO modules (eg. for gate control, motion sensors) and more sophisticated sensors like an ultrasound tank level sensor. Sensors use a software PIC framework using the cheap PIC18F66J60 chips and have a small master module that handles the power and TCP/IP communication and expose GPIOs via headers so any type of sensor can be built around them (eg. bluetooth modules). Similar to arduino but more purpose built - next iteration of the sensor platform will include a small webserver with a web based console to program sensor functionality using the TINYBASIC language. I'm also working on (but not ready yet) a smarter sensor platform using raspberry pi and Windows 10 IoT for more sophisticated functions like speech recognition, touchscreen, audio etc.
Hackaday project blog
Automated
I have automated my front gates (which can also detect who is opening), all house lights on C-BUS (eg. home theater scenes, 'all lights off' button etc.), weather station, power monitoring & solar power inverter (eg. the data transformation engine calculates real time how much energy I'm saving and getting paid by the electricity company), IP camera motion detection and real time and history viewing in the browser, event history for graphing temperature or energy (or whatever) trends over time and a whole lot more.
I have ended up with a lot of automation and a not perfect (or fully complete) but what I still consider to be a pretty sophisticated system with the main features seen in most good automation systems and a number of unique ideas I have not seen elsewhere. If anyone is interested I can share more details, I have some of the code up on github.
I can't post links or add screenshots to show you more of my system - if an admin relaxes my account I'll post.