My home automation project / software

[airox]

Hi Guys,

Lately I also have been automating my home. I have read a lot of stuff on this website about products and software. I eventually decided to go for Z-Wave and write my own software.
This was just the beginning. I bought the following Z-Wave products:

- Aeon labs usb stick
- 2 Popp Duwi ZS 3500 switches
- Qees wall (S)
- HSM100 (3-in-1 sensor)
- 1 Everspring AN157
- Act HomePro ZTW230
- Aeon Labs Door/Window Sensor
- Act HomePro ZDW232
- Act HomePro ZRM230

I started with writing a driver in PHP for receiving and sending z-wave events. Afterwards I wrote a nice rule engine with a web interface.
I added a lot more functionality like incoming email events and bluetooth detection. About two weeks ago I also got a usb RFXcom receiver
so I could monitor my gas and electricity. Today I ordered the RFXmeter, because I wanted to make sure first I could integrate the RFXcom receiver
into my software also. This was very easy compared to the Z-Wave driver part. So previous weekend I got myself the next items:

- Kaku PIR 2050
- Kaku AMST-606
- 2x Kaku KCT-510 (afstandsbediening)
- Kaku doorbell (integrated into my original doorbell)

For pictures of the software check:
http://fotoboek.vandulmen.net/domotica/

You can also see at some images what type of events I use in my house.

Hope you guys like it so far! In the next period I will be integrating the RFXmeter and start my work on some nice graphs to get a bit insight in the costs of my electricity and gas.
Also I am going to attach a USB IR receiver/transmitter on the system so I can integrate my tv, upc mediabox and home cinema set into the home automation system.

I will try to put my progress into this topic

Greetings!

[drmacchi]

Really nice. Good job. cheers

[Mdamen]

Looks nice indeed! Good work!
It's always more fun to create your own software rather then using default software.

[Digit]

I like it a lot, impressive, good job!
And since this is your 1st post, i'm really looking forward to read and see more of your work!

[Bwired]

Looks good!

Is everything done with PHP? can you tell us some more.
regards.Pieter

[Bastiaan]

Nice project, would love to play with it and see how the loading times compare to HS.
Do you have any further plans with it, like sharing the code or go commercial?

What kind of webserver setup hardware/software are you running?

[airox]

Thanks all! A little bit more information about the project.

I have several daemons (zwaveDaemon, rfxcomrxDaemon, bluetoothDaemon, emailboxDaemon, cronDaemon, zoneminderDaemon) which are started by a master daemon and monitored by it. So when a daemon crashes it is started again by the master daemon. All these daemons communicate with the central system by using XMLRPC. These daemons also ask the central system if there are any tasks available for them. Performance wise it all works OK. Lights are turned on instantly. All parts are written in PHP. I use MySQL for the data. At this time I have around 55000 values in the database which I received from devices in the house (temp, switch on, etc).

Defining events and actions can be done by putting them in XML (look at http://fotoboek.vandulmen.net/domotica/ ... Events.xml for my events) and importing them in the interface. The other option would be defining them through the interface.

Some stuff I am currently researching and integrating:
- Voice control using julius
- Scenario based triggering (like .. my car arrived at home (bluetooth detection) and there is movement outside after this and the frontdoor is opened. If all these things happen within 10 minutes I consider it as an arrival and mark presence in the system).
- Possibility to send an overview every month with energy usage to my email including the costs of the month (like an invoice)
- Getting more information out of the data the system records, something I see a lot is people recording data but not getting a lot of information out of it.

I run my software on an Atom CPU based system (dualcore 1.6ghz) with 1GB memory.
Operating system is Ubuntu.

No plans for sharing or commercialising yet...

Greetings!

[Tiz]

Wow, that looks very very good. You make it sound so easy, but from my own experience (and not having a background in IT) I know it isn't.
I will be following your posts to see how you progress. Again, my compliments!

[airox]

Hi guys,

I received the RFXmeter and added support for it in the software. I now have nice graphs of my power usage and gas usage!

See http://fotoboek.vandulmen.net/domotica/verbruik/ for some screenshots.

I am adding support right now which only shows a costs overview of the current day and current month. So I can see quite clearly what my current costs. I'm also adding a possibility to use a "Monthly energy usage report" as an action in the software. So I can configure an event which is triggered every 1st of the month and will email me a monthly energy usage report. If energiedirect won't do it for me, I will

Greetings!

[Bastiaan]

looks good again. Curious how quick all the graphs load when you have it running for a year.

[airox]

I'm also curious about this. I did design the database for maximum performance on saving the values I receive from devices by putting as little duplicate data in one table (the value, date received and the ID of the device). I also added correct indexes. For now querying the database isn't the bottleneck (167,408 rows at this time). I'm considering a mechanism which can archive received values. Another mechanism would be to aggregrate values and only save those values.

Something I can always do is remove all the non essential values like light switches being turned on / off.

Anybody got experience with how much values a year somebody can expect and what strategy would be smart to solve this?

[Snelvuur]

Indeed, nice work. Since you use xmlrpc maybe domotiga.nl can actually also be interesting for you. (not saying you should use that, but perhaps some things to pick up/learn from too)

[airox]

Thanks for the reference, Snelvuur! I already looked at the project. But the software which I needed had to have a web interface.
In the last days I managed to get some estimations into the software which can help me estimate what my montly bill would be.

Another thing I am implementing is this web widget: http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/
It's a handy widget for showing timelines. I want to use it for a timeline of everything which is happing in the house instead of my table like log of events.

I can also show periods of motion in it. This should visualize the data far better. Maybe someone will find the link helpfull also

Greetings!

[airox]

I picked up an iPad this weekend. I'm gonna write an app for it to control my home. Will publish some screenshots when it's finished.

[airox]

Progress so far can be seen at this screenshots: http://fotoboek.vandulmen.net/domotica/ipad.png