Sensor Based Dehumidifier System For Your Home

October 8, 2012 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

The apartment [Angus] lives in must be sealed up pretty tight. It was so humid during the winter that there was a mold issue. We usually have the opposite problem, needing to add humidity to the air in the colder months. To combat the issue he bought a small dehumidifier, but wanted to automate the system a bit more than what was built into its meager controls. He combined a set of wireless sensors and remote control outlets to switch the dehumidifier automatically.

The sensors are from a weather station he bought on eBay. It came with a base station and three remote units, all of which monitor both temperature and humidity. He wanted a system that could compare temperature with dew point and make decisions based on a simple look-up table. An Arduino with a custom milled shield reads these measurements from the sensors and feeds them to a router which is running a cron job script every minute. When that script judges the time and weather conditions warrant a change it tells the Arduino to switch the wireless outlet to which the dehumidifier is connected.

Doorbell To Internet Bridge Also Useful For Other Home Automation

September 28, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

This wireless doorbell hack can send a text message when someone rings. Adding the hardware to the chime unit turned out to be quite simple. It shows potential for a slew of other applications.

[Martin] started the project with a breakout board he had designed for an RFM12B wireless transceiver board. This board is popular because of its low-cost, small size, and ease of operation. [Martin’s] breakout is barely larger than the RFM module itself, and merely adds an ATtiny84 to the mix. In the case of this doorbell project he uses a pin interrupt to detect when the doorbell’s LED is illuminated. This wakes the chip from sleep and sends a message back to the receiver that something has happened.

The receiver can do anything it wants with that data. In this case it uses an email-to-SMS service to send [Martin] a text message. But the home automation applications are vast for this simple hardware. We have a water heater that is not near a floor drain so we use a simple leak detector to sound an alarm if there is ever a problem (the water heater sits in a shallow tray). That works if we’re home at the time. Using [Martin’s] solution could extend that alarm’s reach worldwide.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Garage Door Opener Used To Automatically Lower A Game Table Top

September 24, 2012 by Jesse Congdon 17 Comments

[Lou] is at it again, and this time he wrote in to let us know about his automated ping pong table topper. With no good spot to stash an entire extra table [Lou] decided to take a two in one game table approach and fit the top of the ping pong table to his pool table. A ping pong table top is no small thing though and it turns out the best (or maybe coolest) place to store it is above the ceiling! At the flip of a switch a garage door opener pulls away a section of ceiling tiles and a winch motor lowers the table top into place with two cables.

The system works very smoothly using some pretty easy to find parts. [Lou’s] instructional video (embedded after the break) shows the system in action and explains the concepts behind the automation. We aren’t sure how the winch stops lowering the table, but the ceiling section uses a light switch and spring combo as its limit switch. The only thing really missing is the flashing red light, industrial klaxon, and fog machine needed to compliment the screeching nightmare-howl of that winch motor.

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Home Automation Hack Controls Lights Based On Head Count

September 19, 2012 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

This home automation hardware turns on and off the lights based on room occupancy. The hack is an extension of an earlier version that was only a proof of concept. [RPisces] took the idea and made it into reality by mounting the sensor hardware in a doorway.

He prototyped the device using the MSP430 launchpad. It monitors a pair of IR distance sensors which record a change when something passes between them and the opposite side of the hallway. This is a good sensor choice as it only requires hardware on one side of the passageway. Because two of them are used, it’s quite simple to figure out if a person is entering or leaving the room based on which is tripped first.

In this case [RPisces] drives a relay to switch a lamp on and off. But it could be used for just about anything. We’d enjoy seeing it trigger an audio system like the one [Quinn’s] installing in every room.

Control Your House By Moving Your Arms Like You’re Directing Traffic

August 27, 2012 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

This home automation project lets you flap your arms to turn things on and off. [Toon] and [Jiang] have been working on the concept as part of their Master’s thesis at University. It uses a 3D camera with some custom software to pick up your gestures. What we really like is the laser pointer which provides feedback. You can see a red dot on the wall which followers where ever he points. Each controllable device has a special area to which the dot will snap when the user is pointing close to it. By raising his other arm the selected object can be turned on or off.

Take a look at the two videos after the break to get a good overview of the concept. We’d love to see some type of laser projector used instead of just a single dot. This way you could have a pop-up menu system. Imagine getting a virtual remote control on the wall for skipping to the next audio track, adjusting the volume, or changing the TV channel.

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Lighting Controller Counts How Many People Are In A Room

July 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 32 Comments

[Deekshith Allamaneni] built this controller which will automatically turn the lights in a room on and off. No big deal, right? You can already get a replacement light switch at the home store that will do this for you. But there is one big difference. The commercial solutions we’ve seen simply rely in a motion sensor and a timer. But [Deekshith] found a way to count the number of people that enter a room, turning the lights on when the first person enters and off when the last person leaves.

The video after the break shows a demo of his test rig. At first we just thought that this was only counting how many times an object passes between the sensors. But it can also detect in which direction that object was traveling. Now the system just needs to be scaled up for use in a doorway.

It would be a great addition to the house that doesn’t have any light switches.

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[RobB’s] House Has No Light Switches

July 4, 2012 by Mike Szczys 46 Comments

So [RobB] wanted to take out all the light switches in his house. His plan was to replace them with a system that could be operated from his smart phone. But his wife insisted that there still must be some way to control the lighting directly — we have to agree with her on that one. The solution was to develop a system that switches the lights via a touch sensor or by Bluetooth.

The touch part of the project is pretty easy. He coated the back of a blank outlet plate with tin foil and hooked it to a microcontroller with a couple of resistors. He’s using an ATtiny85, which can be programmed using Arduino sketches, so the software side is made easy by the CapSense Library. The chip also uses the software serial library to communicate with a Bluetooth module. You can see the result of both in the demo video after the break.

Of course you need to throw a relay in there to switch mains, and find a way to power the uC and Bluetooth module. [RobB] went with a tiny plug-in USB power converter and managed to fit everything in a single-gang switch.

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