Building The Backend Of Internet Controlled Devices

[Adam] and [Jeremy] took on the challenge of designing a system that would make it easy to control appliances from the Internet. We’ve seen the concept many times before; it involves some method of switching mains power and connecting that mechanism to the Internet. This design is both well planned and nicely executed.

We’re always very interested in the power switching for a project like this. It’s good that an approved electrical box houses all of the high-voltage parts in the project. Here a GA8-2B02 solid state relay switches power between the incoming cord and the two outlets. We didn’t get a look in the box, but hopefully there’s a partition between those wires and the low-voltage control wiring which uses a standard 3.5 mm audio jack as an interconnect.

An ATmega644 drives the control signal for the relay. It’s connected via Ethernet cable to the Internet through the use of an ENC28J60 chip which takes care of LAN communications. This is essentially a light-weight web server that will be easy to adapt to receive commands from just about any web-connected sender.

[Thanks Bruce]

2 thoughts on “Building The Backend Of Internet Controlled Devices

  1. I’m working on a control system for my garage that this should help with. Maybe not a drop-in system but looks like some good resources to solve problems that I’m going to encounter. I’m working on a system to control 4 different lighting systems in my garage along with the garage door opener perhaps over the internal network of my house. If I get somewhere with it, I may do a write-up on it for my website. :)

  2. I wrote all the software 3 years ago to do the same think, same ethernet chip, but arduino platform and controlling 8 bits for 8 relays.

    My main idea was to make a power base with 8 female power conector, each one individually controled by a button in a web site (naturally, hosted on the arduino).

    I haven’t done the hardware part because in the end I would spend a lot of money and make no use of if.

    Nowadays is cheaper, you can find a perfect board like this: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/8-channel-5v-solid-state-relay-module-board-red-blue-121337?item=18

    You can find the software for 8 relay arduino web based (and ENC28J60 ethernet based) here: http://karman.homelinux.net/blog/archives/282

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