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  • Author Author: mcb1
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BT_Sentry Introduction

mcb1

BT_SENTRY

 

My plan for the BlueTooth Unleashed Challenge is to use it to provide an addition to Home Automation.

 

 

Concept

The idea is to detect the bluetooth transmitted from the vehicle and signal other Home Automation functions.

If the vehicle is known then it can open the garage door, and inform the home owner that xx is home.

 

If the system doesn't recognise the vehicle, it can :-

  • trigger a survelliance camera to record video and take snapshots.
  • turn on the outside lights
  • inform the houseowner that they have visitors
  • Send a notification to a smartphone

This system also can record when someone visited and for how long, which may prove useful if they have been up to no good.

 

 

 

 

Background

I live in the country and we have a shared driveway, and then a long (by normal standards) driveway to the house.

image

When we first moved in, it was open paddocks, and you could see anyone coming into the properties. Now that the trees and shrubs have grown, there is no visibility of incoming vehicles.

Being forewarned about who is coming up the driveway, gives you a few minutes to get sorted before they knock on the door.

 

Because we aren't always at home, having a method to capture pictures of incoming vehicles at least allows you to know what and when someone may have visited.

There are legitimate visitors during the day, but there also some others that could be opportunistic with less than desirable reasons for visiting the property.

 

 

 

Why Bluetooth

I've thought about driveway monitors before, and while they can signal that the beam has been broken, it really tells you nothing more.

You're unable to tell what direction or if it was indeed a vehicle, or some loose stock that broke the beam.

 

Bluetooth monitoring is used in NZ to predict travel times. The local transport agency sniffs the MAC address of vehicles going past and then matches that with the next detection point to build up an average travel time.

It is entirely based on history, so can be several hours ago, but people seem happier to have a figure for their journey time, regardless of the accuracy.

 

This idea uses the same method of snooping the MAC address, but for known vehicles we can add other functionality.

 

 

 

Hardware

The detection point needs to be at the start of the driveway, and because there is no power source, this will need to be low power with solar charging.

The PSOC range seems a very good fit, but because of the timeline and my need to upskill, the inital design will be Arduino based and some form of RF transmitter/transceiver.

 

Adding a vehicle detection loop or beam is necessary to ensure those vehicles without bluetooth will also trigger the system.

 

The camera is intended to be a RaspberryPi which will be performing the receiving signal, along with storing the database of known vehicles, and the appropriate response (ie lights, gargage door, announcement)

Depending on the field tests the RPi could also be doing the Bluetooth detection as well (I prefer to avoid picking up the neighbours movements)

 

This will be housed in an outdoor light fitting, so as to appear normal.

Consideration for the antenna needs to be made as most of these fittings are metal.

This was another done in an earlier challenge, and gives the idea, however I plan to use a version with lots of LEDs (similar to the one below) and swap out some LED's for IR and remove others to allow the camera to be mounted.

image  image

 

So my Hero board will be the Raspberry Pi 3 B+

imagebut I will try to use the Cypress PSOC6 which I purchased earlierimage

 

 

 

 

Software

I've used UV4L https://www.linux-projects.org/uv4l/  for a rear view camera Rear View Camera ver 2.0  , and this has a great advantage of allowing streaming to an indoor server as well as simple control over images.

I expect there will be some python scripts to process the incoming trigger information, as well as passing on relevant information to the internal system for storing and notifying the house occupants.

 

I've used OpenHAB  https://www.openhab.org/  during an earlier challenge, and it lent itself to very powerful control and can easily communicate using NodeRed https://nodered.org/  for switching the outdoor lighting.

This also allows control via phone to switch the lights on/off as required, so it has other uses.

 

I can also use something like ITTT https://ifttt.com/   to push a notification out to a smartphone/email, etc that a visitor is there.

 

 

I imagine the bulk of my time will be integrating, testing and refining the various software parts, as the hardware is fairly straight forward. .... BUT this is a Design Challenge and things are never what they seem.

The RedBear BLE board I looked at and tried ordering is a restricted item into NZ, so forward planning and a plan is a must for these.

Design Challenge Blogs   and  Why Challengers Must Post - Upcycle it - Progress Week 3

 

 

 

I've been twarted on my electronic picture of tying it all together, but the pen still works, and the 'Whitelines" paper https://www.whitelinespaper.com/   seemed a really good way to convey it.

image

 

 

 

Previous Design Challenges

I've been involved in a few previous Challenges and helped judge in another. What is Electronic Up-Cycling

 

The links to my previous are :-

Catch Santa Challenge a mini challenge to catch Santa ... except the delivery schedule got all mucked up, but Santa was on time.

Wireless Power - Beyond the Phone   Beyond the Phone - eLIST progress 6 - pictures  including the extra piece The Illuminated Beer Tap

Forget Me Not Design Challenge    eLDERmon Final Summary  Mark Beckett wins Community Choice Award in element14's Forget Me Not design challenge

 

The Teachers Pet Robotics was the only DC I was unable to complete.

This was due to suddenly having to go to England for five weeks and a mountain of additional work.

I did take it for the trip and made the organisers aware of the situation as soon as possible

BOE Robot

 

 

Thanks for the opportunity to apply.

I think this challenge has some exciting potential and it will be interesting to see the variety in the chosen applicants.

 

Mark

 

 

The other posts are here :-

BT_Sentry Introduction
BT_Sentry : Zero Emission Detection
BT_Sentry : Data Transmission
BT_Sentry : Sentry Power
BT_Sentry : Raspberry Pi
BT_Sentry : Bluetooth Options
BT_Sentry : Software
BT_Sentry : Bluetooth Sniffing
BT_Sentry : OpenHAB
BT_Sentry : Notifications
BT_Sentry : MQTT
BT_Sentry : Connecting to MQTT Broker
BT_Sentry : Summary
BT_Sentry : ESP8266 Clients
Parents

  • Interesting project.  I had thought of taking a Raspberry Pi zero as the low power side and do something along the same lines with a remote solar sending back to the main home where the full Pi would be.  Nothing quite as interesting as this utilization of bluetooth though.  Look forward to seeing this!

  • in reply to jkutzsch

    I had thought of taking a Raspberry Pi zero as the low power side

    I haven't looked at how low the power consumption is on the Zero.

     

     

    I was trying to calculate the power requirements in my head last night, and it's starting to climb.

     

    I can turn RF sender to off, but the BT and the loop/beam detector will have to be continous, which also means the micro will be too.

    Interrupts may help, but I'm guessing a bigger solar panel and battery/supercap might be easier.

     

    This also allows a 'heartbeat' to be sent to ensure it is working.

     

     

     

    Cheers for all the comments.

     

    Mark

  • in reply to mcb1

    I wonder if there is any way you could use an existing Solar powered Motion Detecting light to trigger your board.  Guessing most likely the light would only activate for motion sensing once it was "dark".

     

    What is the scale of your picture?  Curious on how many meters you are expecting.

  • in reply to mcb1

      wrote:

     

    I had thought of taking a Raspberry Pi zero as the low power side

    I haven't looked at how low the power consumption is on the Zero.

     

     

    I was trying to calculate the power requirements in my head last night, and it's starting to climb.

     

    I can turn RF sender to off, but the BT and the loop/beam detector will have to be continous, which also means the micro will be too.

    Interrupts may help, but I'm guessing a bigger solar panel and battery/supercap might be easier.

     

    This also allows a 'heartbeat' to be sent to ensure it is working.

     

     

     

    Cheers for all the comments.

     

    Mark

    The Pi 0 as a device that's supposed to run long on a battery will be hard. I find it hard to make any of these single board linux/other-os devices run on very low power.

    The Buetooth enabled microcontrollers are the way to go if you want to run weeks, months or years on a coin cell.

  • in reply to Jan Cumps

    The Bluetooth enabled microcontrollers are the way to go if you want to run weeks, months or years on a coin cell.

    Thanks I'd like to use some of the PSOC and ST boards as these are less power hungry.

     

    However I think that the up-skilling time will be the major stumbling block for me, and as we all know Design Challenges have the habit of consuming time without adding extras. image

    Having just said that though I have ordered a PSOC4 with BT CY8C4248LQI-BL583CY8C4248LQI-BL583

    It seems that the BT isn't exactly low energy.

    image

     

    I was suspecting that the vehicle loop or detection might be the major power user.

    BUT it seems I might need to look at all the parts .... or just get a much bigger solar cell and battery image

     

     

    Cheers

    Mark

  • in reply to mcb1

      wrote:

     

    ...

     

    However I think that the up-skilling time will be the major stumbling block for me, and as we all know Design Challenges have the habit of consuming time without adding extras.

     

     

    The PSoC tutorial are great. I think that Cypress is a company that provides great boards, a great IDE and great documentation. I've done a road test on their PSoC 4 and was impressed by the quality of their learning tracks.

     

    Having just said that though I have ordered a PSOC4 with BT https://www.element14.com/community/view-product.jspa?fsku=2617407&nsku=&COM=noscriptCY8C4248LQI-BL583

    CY8C4248LQI-BL583

    It seems that the BT isn't exactly low energy.

    image

     

     

    Yes, that's not a BLE one. The CY8CKIT-042-BLE Bluetooth low energy pioneer kit is the one I used - I sent it to @DAB (correction: I sent a Zero Gecko kit to @DAB, the Cypress kit went to ) recently image.

    There are BLE capable controllers that can go in a fairly deep sleep and wake up on a hardware or sensor trigger.

    I haven't checked if receiving BLE traffic (I believe that's what you're looking for here - detecting traffic)  can be one of those triggers - I tested with sensors and wake-up pulses.

     

    Edit: here's an exercise that I did to control a microcontroller by its dedicated sensor subsystem - a system that allows the radio and microcontroller to go in hibernation: SimpleLinkTm Sub-1 GHz Wireless Microcontroller - Side Note : Measure Power Use of Sensor Controller Engine

    Although this is for sub-1 GHz instead of BLE, some BLE controllers provide the similar concepts. Very useful if you want to save as much power as you can.

Comment
  • in reply to mcb1

      wrote:

     

    ...

     

    However I think that the up-skilling time will be the major stumbling block for me, and as we all know Design Challenges have the habit of consuming time without adding extras.

     

     

    The PSoC tutorial are great. I think that Cypress is a company that provides great boards, a great IDE and great documentation. I've done a road test on their PSoC 4 and was impressed by the quality of their learning tracks.

     

    Having just said that though I have ordered a PSOC4 with BT https://www.element14.com/community/view-product.jspa?fsku=2617407&nsku=&COM=noscriptCY8C4248LQI-BL583

    CY8C4248LQI-BL583

    It seems that the BT isn't exactly low energy.

    image

     

     

    Yes, that's not a BLE one. The CY8CKIT-042-BLE Bluetooth low energy pioneer kit is the one I used - I sent it to @DAB (correction: I sent a Zero Gecko kit to @DAB, the Cypress kit went to ) recently image.

    There are BLE capable controllers that can go in a fairly deep sleep and wake up on a hardware or sensor trigger.

    I haven't checked if receiving BLE traffic (I believe that's what you're looking for here - detecting traffic)  can be one of those triggers - I tested with sensors and wake-up pulses.

     

    Edit: here's an exercise that I did to control a microcontroller by its dedicated sensor subsystem - a system that allows the radio and microcontroller to go in hibernation: SimpleLinkTm Sub-1 GHz Wireless Microcontroller - Side Note : Measure Power Use of Sensor Controller Engine

    Although this is for sub-1 GHz instead of BLE, some BLE controllers provide the similar concepts. Very useful if you want to save as much power as you can.

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