Pi IoT - Pilot - home automation system

The "Pi IOT Design Challenge - Smarter Spaces with Raspberry Pi 3" it is a very interesting challenge and I want to present my idea about a possible implementation.

     Home automation is aimed to improve life quality in a living space by automating environment control (temperature, humidity, ventilation, air quality, etc.), security and operation of various appliances. But it is hard and sometimes not easy/practical to automate all aspects of a living/working space. By putting remote access on top of an automated system, the people concerned about a specific space can be notified about unplanned events and act accordingly or can change the parameters of the automated system to suit new requirements.

       The goal of my project is to automate and connect my living space, with the aim to build a solution that can be generalized and scaled in ways to be applicable to other types of living/working spaces.

  For my specific use case, this attempt will cover three main areas:

  - environment control - regulate temperature, humidity and ventilation with the help of the two ventilation units, an air conditioning unit and motorised blinds.

  - security - record movement outside of front door with Raspberry camera, take picture of person ringing the doorbell and sent via email, check if front and balcony doors are locked when leave home.

  - appliance control and monitoring - control aquarium and hamster lights and feeders and water plants, especially when I'm not at home.

  The system will have following components:

- A master control unit - RaspberryPi3 + Camera + PiFaceDigital2 - will be the master part of the system and provide following functions:

  - provide interface for display status and control system functions with the help of a web page

  - snap a picture when someone rings at the door

  - motion detection

  - send notifications for events

  - communicate with actuators directly or through relays (PiFaceDigital2) - for example control water for plants, lights for aquarium, etc

  - will be mounted directly on front door, because have direct access to door visor, it is close to plants pots and it is in perfect spot to be seen when leave home and have a last check.

- Mobile control unit - RaspberryPi B+ + WiFi dongle + temperature/humidity sensor - will be a mobile control and sensing unit and provide following functions:

  - temperature and humidity measurement - info is sent to master unit in order to take the required actions to bring the environment parameters at desired values (or as close as possible).

  - being mobile can be placed in any place to take measurements and optional video/audio surveillance

  - backup for remote access and control of appliances if master is not available

- Actuators and end effectors:

  - ventilation and air conditioning units - used to control temperature and humidity

  - ventilation units are now manually controlled by radio (remote controlled power outlets)

  - air conditioning unit - IR manual control

  - aquarium - remote controlled power outlets by RaspberryPi

  - blinds - will be actuated by standard hobby servos

  - water pump for plants

  - feeder for the hamster and aquarium will be made also with hobby servos

  I will attempt to implement all these functions by creating independent nodes and each node will control an actuator or effector. These nodes are remote connected to Master control unit or Mobile control unit. Remote connection will be radio, infrared or a combination of these.

  I will present a use scenario, thought for my particular case (please look at the picture for a better understanding.)

  My apartment is on the third floor, have a east-west orientation and it is structured on two levels. On lower level is living room, bathroom and kitchen, on top level two bedrooms.

I have plants placed on both eastern and western windows, trouble is, they are sensitive to direct sunlight. So in the morning I have to close the blinds from the east part and ideally open them after noon and do the opposite for the blinds on the west side. Problem is, there is nobody home to do these maneuvers and to prevent plants to be harmed and also to prevent heat come through the windows during summer, the blinds are closed most of the day.

An automated system to manage the blinds and control water for plants would help plants to have more light in a more controlled way.

  An other aspect is air conditioning. The AC unit is placed on top floor and can provide cooling(and some heating) for entire space. Problem is, it cannot be programmed by default to start at a certain hour,

run for a determined amount of time, switch then to dehumidification or turn off, and so on. Moreover, if bedrooms doors are opened the cold air will spread in to these rooms and the lower floor will get

very little cold air. I plan to deal with these shortcomings by providing a more flexible control of AC unit and to provide an automatic way to control when bedrooms doors are opened or closed with the help

of two small robots attached to the doors. These robot are remote controlled by the two control units (Master and Mobile) according to temperature requirements configured by user.

There are also many other aspects that can be monitored and controlled remotely, these are only two examples of how this system can be implemented. Below is the system schematic:

#2 First step - Monitoring the environment

#3 Monitoring the environment - part 2

#4 Monitoring the environment - switch to MQTT

#5 Add USB sound card and a couple of enclosures