Home Monitoring

12/13/11 – Inspired by some Google Reader posts and etc, I’ve decided to get back into the electronic Home Monitoring setup. My goals:
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1) Monitor and log *most* rooms in the house for temperature.
2) Monitor garage for temperature
3) Monitor/Alert garage doors open/shut state
4) Easily remotely open and close garage doors
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Technology:

1) Control/Monitoring system: I’ll use a unix system with some combination of shell scripts, python, etc – and a graphing system something like RRDTool to make an http page for monitoring. For control (close or open garage door), I might use email.

2) Sensor/Control interface: I like the idea of a system where the interface is wired ethernet and supports standard http queries. That way I shouldn’t have to worry about interference or changing radio standards for a long time. I’ve started by ordering an Arduino Uno Ethernet board from Adafruit.

Arduino Ethernet Library

3) Temperature sensors: not sure yet. I just had a great idea about integrating sensors into RJ-45B plugs and connecting them directly to the cat5 outlets. That could be pretty sweet.

4) Garage door control: do I need relays or can I just close a loop on the Arduino?

5) Garage door monitor: I like the Instructables method of the roller switch on the garage door.
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Questions – how many inputs and of what type do I need?

12-16-11
First test! It blinks. You need to modify the standard first test Blink program to do L9 instead of L13. (there is no L13 on this board)

Lol – ten minutes later, it’s now a web server.

And another 10 minutes later, only because I took time to grab a beer, it’s now including digital inputs, has a little title and spacing.

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