- [INDEX]
- Introduction and project description
- Sensor Node and Gateway Design
- How I use OpenHAB - audio notification and dashboards
- Design detail for wireless sensor nodes and gateway
- Uber Sensor - wireless sensor for fire, smoke, gas, barking, light, movement
- Diaper Box Sensor
- Laundry Room Sensor
This is part of a series of blog posts related to my entry in the Forget Me Not design challenge. Click here to go to my introduction and index.
OpenHAB – Powerful Dashboards and Voice Notifications
I'm a huge fan of OpenHAB. Aside from their open source ethos, I like how they try to connect with anything. OpenHAB just fits into home automation – particularly the ability to use it for dashboards and voice notifications.
Dynamic Voice Notifications – Put the sound where it needs to be, at the volume it needs to be at.
Being able to hear voice notifications is pretty handy for home automation. OpenHAB can play mp3 files as well as perform text to speech, and the audio comes out of the Raspberry Pi's 3.5mm audio port. Take a look at my Mailbox Notifier example here to see/hear it in action.
http://www.element14.com/community/videos/13075/l/mailbox-notifier
Last year, I swapped out my chain drive garage door for a belt driven one. It's quieter, but I can no longer hear when the door operates, and I miss that. Now that I have a garage door sensor reporting back to OpenHAB, the Raspberry Pi can literally tell me when the garage door is opened or closed. You can easily add another sensor to tell which car pulls up into the garage, and actually say “Eric is home”. It's trivial, but kind of neat.
You can also dynamically change the volume of the audio announcement based on time of day. Louder around dinner time when you're making dinner racket, quieter at night, or even mute all/some voice notifications after 10PM. Some types of audio notifications should be louder than others. With the rules engine, you can take those nuances into consideration. Heck, you can take into account the ambient noise around the speakers and customize the volume for that.
I also love the idea of disconnecting the source of the audio alarm from the device it's related to. My project will use sensors to signal OpenHAB when the washer/dryer completes a cycle, which then plays a completion audio signal on the Raspberry Pi. There are reasons why it's inconvenient for the dryer to buzz when the drying cycle completes. The dryer might not be where the people can hear it. Or, maybe the dryer is near where people don't want to hear the completion signal. With OpenHAB audio notifications, you can put the Raspberry Pi where you want to hear the alarm.
It's a powerful idea. An analogy would be if you honk your horn at the car in front of you – the horn should sound inside THEIR car, not under the hood of yours. Well...maybe not the best example, but something to think about.
If you asked someone where they want the TV, they would rationally tell you to put it in the living room. If you asked someone where the washer/dryer completion signal should be sounded from, I don't think they would answer “in the basement”. That's silly, but not obvious. I think the power of Iot is to make these silly things obvious for future generations.
I don't know how much the “Internet of Things” will revolutionize our lives. But if it helps to make the location of the dryer signal as obvious as the location of your big screen TV, that's something. Like...of course you can find the current population of Greenland from your phone. And of course the dryer completion signal shouldn't be coming from the basement.
In fact, it might be useful for that audio notification to played at two different locations, on two different Raspberry Pi's...that are on different LANs.
Dashboards At a Glance
While email notifications are very nice when you're away, I like having heads up displays showing me important information when I'm at home. As I build up my home automation, these dashboards becomes much more useful. I have a cheap $20 smart phone in the kitchen and at my bedside. The kitchen smart phone display comes on during certain parts of the day. I can glance at it when doing everyday things like making breakfast or dinner. It shows current temperatures and tells me if the garage is closed. I use my bedside dashboard to check that the garage door is closed before sleeping...or to recheck it. As I add more useful sensors, like baby room temperature, washer/dryer status, door/window status, the dashboard becomes more functional. All the things I used to get up out of bed to check, I can stick an EnOcean sensor on it, and plop it down on the dashboard. I'd like the dashboard to be dynamic at some point – show different stuff depending on time of day or what alarms are currently active.
I'm keeping up a blog of my project here.
