There is no Dark Side of the Moon - matter of fact, it's all dark.

Eclipse Home Automation

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Right now, my house is being controlled by a custom application which runs on Redhat Linux (FC3), and uses an X10 Cm15a and a Maxim 1-Wire interface to interface with the "outside world". I'm also using some custom Hardware to control/monitor specific item (e.g. the Garage door being left open).

Here's just a simple display of what's been happening weather-wise in my own yard. Nothing too complex, and required only a few lines in the script that controls my house.

Stand-alone projects

As a result, I've started on some projects which are down right simple (and cheap)!

For now, here's what I got in the works:

• a SIMPLE temperature display. It uses a LM34, the PIC12F675, a LED and a resister, and displays the current temperature by flashing the LED. I'm currently testing and documenting this project. I decided to add some temperature alarm conditions, and can be used by adding a few additional components.

• An automatic Garage door closer. It detects that a Garage Door is open, and then tries to close it after a selectable time interval. The Garage Door Closer.
  Partrial and full kits are now available!

X-10 and 1-wire

This whole project started with a need to interface "non X10" devices with a simple X10 controller. There are certain things not available with inexpensive X10 lamp/applicance modules that are a nice addition. A great example of this is a temperature sensor. Also, there are things you may want to interface with a HA system, and you don't want someone outside the house to have the ability to use X10 rf or even X10 PLC to be able to control. Another great example here is opening your garage door.

In the garage door case, I wanted to be able to close the garage door if it had been open too long (20 minutes), and retry until the door was closed. I had a 10 year old X10 interface with an IO controller (A and D), but it was no longer supported, and was getting flakey. A new unit with the same functionality cost on the order of $500, and in my eyes, was quite limited.

The Dallas 1-Wire devices seemed like a good approach. It's a "buss" type system, where 2 or three wires (low voltage) need to run from a control computer to the points where 1-wire devices are located. This can be a single run stopping at the required locations, or a few runs, "home runned" to a common point (a star). In either case a single set of wires can support multiple 1-wire devices. The two rewuired wires are for ground and data, with the third being a common power supply (5v in my case).

The 1-wire devices cost on the order of $2-$3 each, and the ones I use come in a standard to-92 package (looks like a transistor) and interface boards can be built using minimal soldering skills. They are also available as "surface mount" for those who perfer that. A 1-wire adpater is required at the PC end, and both USB and RS-232 versions are available for about $20. So, for $20 plus a couple buck per device, the 1-wire part of the project is very flexible nad inexpensive!

I did want to tie in X10, and allow 1-wire devices to influence X10, and visa versa, and the X10 Cm15a controller seemed like a good fit. It was cheap ($50), and had a USB interface. It also had an SDK, so I figured I could tie it into my 1-wire app.

Well, the Cm15a SDK was very limited (specific version of a Microsoft compiler and only worked on Windows) so I devleoped an interface that would run on Linux. I run redhat Linux v9 on my main server, and that's the machine that's up 24/7 for other things so was a great fit for HA. This site details the info I've learned.

The 1-wire/X10 app I've created has a reasonable scripting launguage. As time goes by, more and more of what I've done will be documented here. The Cm15a interface seems to have generated the most interest, so that's the first part I'm documening.

• CM15a - specs and Sample Linux code