ez430 home automation

posted Feb 8th 2010 12:07pm by Mike Szczys
filed under: home hacks

[Oliver] has been doing some work to use his TI ez430 Chronos wristwatch for some home automation. He’s working with a RF controllable lightbulb adapter which operates in the 433 MHz band. A dirt-cheap breadboard-friendly transmitter is available from Seeed Studios and he uses this in conjunction with a computer and an Arduino. Before the trolls get to their thing, YES, this is incredible overkill. But remember that he’s prototyping. We hope that if he intends to actually use this setup he’ll migrate to something like an ATtiny2313 running V-USB. Better yet, you should be able to tap into the watch’s companion receiver and cut the computer out completely.

If you’re easily amused you’ll appreciate the video of a light turning on and off after the break. If you’re a little harder to please then take a look at Oliver’s methods of using Python processing for the watch’s data.

Ok, now we’ve seen this watch turning on lights and unlocking doors. What else ‘ya got?

Comments [12]

tagged: 433, arduino, ez430, RF, texas instruments, ti

Reader Comments

wow, so people are actually able to order this watch. unbelievable.

Posted at 12:16 pm on Feb 8th, 2010 by darkore

I always use those small tx&rx serial things. Communication doesnt get any simpler/cheaper.

Posted at 12:18 pm on Feb 8th, 2010 by googfan

Sadly tapping into the supplied receiver isn’t likely as it’s a one cip RF to usb package, however when the 433MHz version is released I’ll be much more likely to try out direct comms with a MCU

Posted at 12:22 pm on Feb 8th, 2010 by chemicaloliver

I think X10 would work much better, plus gives you many more options than just a light turning on or off.

Posted at 12:41 pm on Feb 8th, 2010 by concino

x2 on the X10
hahaha
But this is still pretty impressive.
Good work.

Posted at 1:07 pm on Feb 8th, 2010 by Fallen

The primary reason I’m interested in the TI Chronos – turning the light on and off in my home. Still waiting for the 433MHz to be released. My current remote controller runs at 433.92MHz with a 5 dip-switch to control up to five different receivers (that effectively turn the light on or off), so getting it to work would be no big problem.

Just waiting for it to ship in Sweden though..

Posted at 2:27 pm on Feb 8th, 2010 by Pierre

The 433MHz version isn’t scheduled until march, once mine was dispatched it came quite quickly

Posted at 2:40 pm on Feb 8th, 2010 by chemicaloliver

Tried to order the 868MHz version the other day, but the TI store kept messiong up :/

Posted at 6:36 pm on Feb 8th, 2010 by martinmunk

Great minds think alike. I’ve been looking forward to trying this since I first saw the Chronos.

I’m still waiting for the 433MHz version though, then I’ll see if I can use the Home Easy protocol straight from the watch.

Posted at 6:43 am on Feb 9th, 2010 by Peter

I’m actually working on a stand-alone version of a pretty similar thing. I’m using a AT90USB1287 AVR-Microcontroller as CDC-Host. Initialization works great.

Posted at 4:27 pm on Feb 9th, 2010 by Sylwester

I really enjoy the information on this blog. I came across it while searching on MSN

Posted at 7:36 pm on Feb 13th, 2010 by Esteban Eguchi

Are there any cyclists using this product?

Posted at 8:04 pm on Feb 16th, 2010 by Gregg Grosshans