The Internet of Things is a horrific waste of time, even though no one knows exactly what it is. What would make it better? Classic Commodore gear, of course. Now you can run your smart home with a Commodore 64 and Commodore Home, the newest smart home framework from [retro.moe].
Commodore Home comes with the standard smart home features you would expect. The home lighting solution is a dot matrix printer, a few gears, and string tied to the light switch. Activate the printer, and the lights turn on and off. Brilliant. Multiple light switches can be controlled by daisy chaining printers.
Security is important in the smart home, and while the intruder alarm isn’t completely functional, future versions of Commodore Home will dial a modem, log into a BBS, and leave a message whenever an authorized person enters your home.
All of this is possible thanks to advances in UniJoystiCle technology, also from [retro.moe]. This device takes a standard ESP8266 WiFi module and turns it into a smartphone-to-joystick port bridge for the Commodore 64.
Unlike every other piece of IoT hardware being sold today, Commodore Home won’t stop working when the company behind it goes belly up; Commodore has been dead for twenty years already. You can grab all the software for Commodore Home over on the Githubs, or you can check out the video below.
Wow … April 1 just keeps coming sooner and sooner!
Ha! May have also had something to do with California legalizing pot.
Repurposing old stuff for new purposes is never ‘foolish’
Turning a light on and off using a dot-matrix printer? Yah, Normally I’m with you but this time I’m really struggling.
Admittedly that’s a bit silly… but what if you were to use a cam to do the same thing? or.. say you have a ‘bus-style-pullrope’ setup.. and you use a cam+controller to turn/tug the string to actuate it?
Gotta’ work an Arduino in there somewhere too! ;-)
Nice combination of the old and the new and the wife’s expression at 58 seconds is priceless. Intruder Alert. Intruder Altert.
She has that look of simultaneously “I can’t believe I agreed to marry this idiot” and “I can’t believe I got to marry this idiot”
The ESP8266’s memory capacity and computing power leave the C64 dead in the water.
It can even generate a video signal on it’s own. So why use a C64 at all?
Well, because you can, I guess.
C64 has parallel port, why not add some logic to make IO expansion and use that to directly control home automation with triacs and optotriacs? Using printer is just too Rube Goldberg for me…
Well by 1987 the BBC Micro (and other UK home micros) had ‘Red Boxes’ home automation controls, from a company that one of the founders of Acorn went on to start : http://cpcrulez.fr/hardware-autres-GIS-red_boxes.htm
More details here : http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/36892/BBC-Micro-Red-Box/
They were actually used for similar sort of stuff, in the UK. This forum thread discusses the train time screens used by British rail. (And there is a pic of one thats obviously crashed and is showing the boot screen). http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9217
I also seem to remember someone mentioning they were used in some Water pumping stations, but i cant find a reference to that.
PET is cooler. Use that. Did u blow out user port or just think the user port to good 4 u? Was home automation USA side in the 80’s. Was called and still is X10. AC wall modules. Plug module in wall and plug AC device in unit. Several rebrands but same X10 modules inside. Even IBM got in on it selling the ‘Home Commander’. Radio Shack/Tandy on all TRS-80 and COCo as well as Commodore and Apple . Serial control transciever was available with protocols for anyone wanting to use the zero crossing protocol. Getting harder to find that though there are newer and far better systems. Worked ok but certain noisy loads and flourescent lights would screw it up.
But this something far betterer.
ESP82 for a wifi AtAri joystick interface to hook C64 so it be controlled by a cell phone so as to actuate the head on matrix printer to turn on light switch. Goldberg would be proud but he wouldve tried to add livestock in there somewhere. Maybe use platen drive to actuate wings of a fake chicken so as to cool off the c64 and chickens head position to peck at a light switch? Should play ‘chicken dance’ midi whilst actuating light. I wait in anticipation for next article.