Raspberry Home Automation Cluster

I'm currently working on the fourth domotica version. I hope this will be the best, and last…

Even in a cluster form, the Raspberry's showed not to be bullet proof. As you can imagine, this is must for a system you depend your lighting, heating, venting, security, etc. on.

The new idea is to get the system in the "cloud". I really hate this marketing term, but ok.., I'm going into the cloud.. -_-

I have ordered a "Electric Imp". This is a small microcontroller with the SD card form factor, and can (must?!) be programmed thru the Imp cloud IDE. So far I have one "imp" running, and posting his GPIO port status to my own domotica API.

I will let this run for a few days, and check if this will be a stable solution for my domotica blues….

Will keep you guys updated!

Just replaced the 3 SD-card for some brand new PNY high speed 16 GB card. Looking good so far! :)

Just added the Pushover API notification service to the cluster. This is a third-party app for android and apple, and it can display notifications on your phone. The notifications can be pushed by a web API.

For now the cluster will push a notification when the scheduled “getting darn, lights on” job runs. And when the “lights of when nobody home” job runs.

Hope it will work…

Recently made a few adjustment to the web-app interface (see pictures).

I added a dropdown menu, and added a few new functions like:

• -Real-time weather information
• -Information tab that shows if anybody is home or not, car presence etc.
• -System maintenance, just a tab to monitor, shutdown and reboot the cluster.
• -Security system. This will let you check the status of the system, arm and disarm it.

Made a new php based remote 'webapp' for my phone. It allows me to control the lights, and the central ventilation system. See the project pictures for a screenshot.

The ventilation system is also triggered by a cronjob. It will shut off at 23.00, and start venting again around 11.00 in the morning.

The rest of the system is still working like a charm. Sometimes I lose a pi, but the backup nodes will take its place, and everything is well. : )

This morning I checked the cluster for errors, but there were none. No errors, no change in slave/master roles or whatsoever. : )

Furthermore the 433 MHz ASK modules still work like a charm! The light sockets seem to respond better to the Raspberry cluster, then to the original remote.

Other little update>> The TV, digital TV tuner, radio etc. are switched off at night, and are powered back on in the morning. This will save some extra €15,- on standby-power a year.

Made a cronjob which runs a ‘tasklist’.

The first task I made runs a script which check the current month, looks up the ‘sundown’ time in a table, and switches on some lights, but only when someone is present (if it can detect one of our mobile devices on the network ( wifi ) ).

It work! And also scared the crap out of me the first time, haha. : )

I came across a special offer on KAKU outlets from some Dutch home depot, so I bought some and added a set of 433 MHz ASK modules to the cluster.

After doing the research on internet I found the following code for controlling the KAKU wireless outlets: http://weejewel.tweakblogs.net/blog/8665/lampen-schakelen-met-een-raspberry-pi.html

I works like a charm!

Added Wi-Fi device detection. A cronjob triggers a little bash script which on his turn checks if my phone can be reached. The result is pushed to the database, and can be queried by jobs like (Turn on light A1, if phone presents > 5/10, and time > 21:00)