Clik here to view.
Raspberry Pi Home Controller; In service and working
I finally made the plunge yesterday and brought my Rasberry Pi online and disconnected my old controller. The Pi is now doing all the functions of the controller and presenting a web interface for...
View ArticleXively, I've just about given up on it.
I was reviewing a couple of my pages after changing my House Controller to a Raspberry Pi, and noticed that one of my charts was several hours behind the current readings. Then I noticed that the chart...
View ArticleGroveStreams Another Data Service
In my continuing search for sites to put my house data on I encountered Grovestreams.com on the Arduino forum. Well, since I have a cool setup to try these things out I decided to give it a try. At...
View ArticleFloats and Strings Over a Serial Link (like an XBee)
I've mentioned many times how I use a regular old ascii string as the payload when communicating between XBees whenever possible. There's several reasons for this, but the biggest is debugging the...
View ArticleGroveStreams and the SteelSeries Gauges
If you've been following my rantings, you've seen the SteelSeries gauges. I think they are the very best analog display widgets on the web. At least right now. Well, GroveStreams enabled them as a...
View ArticleBelkin's Wemo Light Switch Part 1
This is an ongoing project (aren't they all) so I'm calling this part one. I recently (couple three weeks ago) bought a Wemo Light Switch (link). I was fascinated by the fact that it runs embedded...
View ArticleBelkin's Wemo Light Switch Part 2
It's been over a month (well, almost two months) since I wrote about the Wemo switch. During that time, Belkin has come out with the Insight switch and a couple of iterations of the Android software....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Arduino and the Iris Zigbee switch
A friend of mine is looking for a way to control a light remotely. His problem, and mine also, is that these darn things are expensive and require a controller. He specifically wanted something that...
View ArticleArduino and the Iris Zigbee switch, part 2
I've had a few days to play with the Iris switch <link> and I like it. However it doesn't play well with others. In that I mean I tried to bring it up on the network with my other devices and...
View ArticleArduino and the Iris Zigbee switch, part 3
I've been working with the Iris Smart Switch for three weeks or so and I believe I have enough hacked out of it to make a useful addition to my home automation. As I mentioned before, it controls an...
View ArticleRaspberry Pi and the Lowe's Iris Smart Switch
So, I got the Lowe's Iris Smart Switch working pretty well for the Arduino <link>. The problem is that it isn't where I want the software to run. I have a Raspberry Pi controlling the house...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Using the Iris Smart Switch to Measure Appliance Power
Since I finished the example of how to operate the Iris Smart Switch with a Raspberry Pi, I couldn't wait to hook it to something and do something real with it. I decided to measure the power usage of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Raspberry Pi, USB, and XBee
I have two XBees hooked to my Pi now, one to control the network I've been building for a long time hooked to the serial port, and the other acting as a controller for my Iris Smart Switch hooked into...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I Want To Complain about 'Experts'
My refrigerator started giving me trouble. No, it wasn't the Iris Smart Switch I installed in the power, it was that the darn thing started to get warm. I opened the door and the little thermometer I...
View ArticleKissing Goodbye to DynDns
For a long time now I've been using Dyn's free service DynDns. For those of you that don't understand what I'm talking about, most homes have DSL provided by one of the big names or cable modems...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why I'll Never Buy Another Motorola Cell Phone
A couple of years ago I pre-ordered a Motorola Razr Max cell phone. It came right on time, the day it was released, and was SO COOL! It was running Android and had all the bells and whistles that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Android, Samsung Phone, My very own app, and a Raspberry Pi Home Automation...
I did it; I finally took the plunge and created an app for Android that runs on my phone and controls the house. I didn't want to go through the learning curve necessary to conquer the Android...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wemo Devices Are Getting Interesting Now
I'm not one of those guys that gathers tech news items and reposts them to increase my page views or hits, but this is going to be an exception. I was prowling around looking for ideas for a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hooking HighCharts Into My House
If you prowl around this blog very long you'll run into a bunch of charts. I've experimented with several cloud services for storing data and shown examples of my own data using their charting...
View ArticleJasper for voice commands
I'm rapidly getting to the point that I need to have a simple remote control that I can use around the house. I've thought about several possibilities, but I ran across Jasper <link> and that...
View Article