My DIY home automation/monitoring project

[recre8]

I've been working on my own makeshift home automation and monitoring project and just wanted to show you guys the progress.

I have terrible OCD when it comes to my house's alarm system being on when I leave (Insurance refused to pay out a claim once).

The alarm system has LEDs to show whether the system is disarmed (LED off), arming (LED flashing) or armed (LED on). So took an I Arduino, added an LDR to monitor the alarm system LED. I decided to add on some more features: I took apart an extra ET remote control I had, and figured out how to connect the remote control's switches via opto-isolators to the Arduino. This allows me to arm/disarm the alarm and open the garage doors. I also added a relay to "short" the intercom system to open the complex gate.

Then I wanted to check the garage doors' status, so I added those magnetic door sensors to my garage doors. I also wanted to measure my electricity usage, so I stuck an LDR to my prepaid meter's flashing LED. I record the timespan between pulses to a SQL Server Compact Edition database to measure electricity usage.

My Arduino is connected to a small Asus eeebox in a cupboard underneath my staircase. I wrote a small webserver in C# and made a site to monitor it with. I figured out that I can use Prowl to send notifications to my iPhone, so now I have notifications whenever the alarm is unarmed or triggered.

A while ago, I had a GSM-based tracker fitted to my car, so my next step is to get the house to turn on the lights when I get close to home.

Some screenshots of the website:
*The temperature is still a fixed value. I'm working on getting a temperature sensor.


Main page


Electricity page - Overview (usage for last 24 hours)


Electricity Usage page


Electricity Consumption page

Next step is adding some lighting control.

[YingYang]

Very nice. I'm also looking at doing something similar.

[CrazyFig]

Nice dude...would love some in depth steps for us not clued up on this kinda thing.

Damn that elec consumption is low...wish mine was that low

[AstroTurf]

that is really awesome

[czc]

Very nice dude.

[praetor360]

agreed, maybe a post dedicated to how you did it all and suggestions for the rest of us to do this

[recre8]

Thanks for the positive comments guys

Nice dude...would love some in depth steps for us not clued up on this kinda thing.

Damn that elec consumption is low...wish mine was that low

I don't use any electrical heating. Because my electricity is resold to me by PEC Metering, I'm already paying about R550 a month for my measly consumption.

[lemaC]

How do you monitor the elec consumption?

[Goobie]

agreed, maybe a post dedicated to how you did it all and suggestions for the rest of us to do this

+10000000

[recre8]

agreed, maybe a post dedicated to how you did it all and suggestions for the rest of us to do this

Sure I'm open to that. I'll start with Arduino code.

Realizing that I will be adding more and more features over time, I wrote a rudimentary messaging protocol between the host computer and Arduino.
The basics of it is:
[Start of message char = '*'][Length of message][Message code][Message Payload][Message footer char = '#']

The arduino's loop/main method simple has all the "input checking" code on a loop every 10ms.

To do the alarm system's LED monitoring, I simply compare the current value from the LDR (measuring the alarm system's LED) to the last value. If it HIGH and is now LOW, the alarm system is disarmed. If it was LOW and is now HIGH, the alarm is being armed. To determine whether the LED is flashing, I simply check how long ago the LED changed between HIGH and LOW, and if it is less than 2 seconds, the alarm is in a arming/triggered state.

Upon realizing a change in the alarm state, the Arduino then sends a message over the serial USB port to the computer telling it of the new state. The software on the computer then logs the event, and depending on how severe it is (e.g. disarming or triggering) it send a notification via Prowl to my phone.

More to follow, tea break is over.

PS. All the charts are Google Vizualization/Chart Tools
https://developers.google.com/chart/

[patrick]

Impressive work. Is this a hobby or somehow related to your work?

Mind if I ask for details on the GSM tracker. I've been looking for one which will send co-ordinates via http, but the only ones I could find use TCP/UDP.

[praetor360]

thanks man, bookmarking for sure!!!

[mister]

Very cool!

[gregmcc]

Awesome! Makes my elec monitor look like child's play! (and its now broken)

Is your arduino code open source?

[MickeyD]

@OP, you should also chat to jannievanzyl as this is one of his pets!