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Project14 | Give Your Habitat a Personality Using Home Automation!

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Home Automation

Enter Your Electronics & Design Project for a chance to win a $100 Shopping Cart!

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Project14 Home
Monthly Themes
Monthly Theme Poll

 

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In the comments below:  Let Us Know Your Home Automation Project Ideas!

 

Use Whatever Components You Like! Or, Come Up With Something that uses a MATRIX Creator as We're Sending Out a Limited Number for Project Ideas that Use One!

 

The theme this month is Home Automation and its based on a suggestion from .  Anything goes as long as your project involves home automation.  You can use this as an opportunity to give your habitat a personality by doing a project that involves artificial intelligence, machine learning, automated comfort control, security features, or voice assistance.  Another source of inspiration for this theme comes from 's idea to use this theme to pay homage to a habitat with a personality, S.A.R.A.H. (Self actuated Residential Automated Housing), from the 2016 show Eureka.

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S.A.R.A.H. is a home with "artificial intelligence" that is built inside an abandoned fallout shelter. It utilizes parts of an existing parts of a military program called BRAD (Battle Reactive Automatic Defense), which like Joshua, aka WORP (War Operation Response Plan), in the 1983 movie War Games, is a supercomputer based on a two-dimensional war game.

 

S.A.R.A.H is powered by a radioisotope thermal nuclear generator.  It was designed to be an "artificially intelligent" Home of the Future in 2016. It comes equip with a laser defense system, various airtight partitions, a filtered air intake, and has the ability to analyze airborne material. Among the perks that S.A.R.A.H. offers her guests are the ability to open and close sealed doors, control internal temperature, offers a really good massage, and provides a variety of drinks. Among her many talents is automating a perfectly poured pint of beer!  Building a supercomputer with artificial intelligence is a definitely one way that you can build a home automation device that gives your habitat a personality.

 

Both S.A.R.A.H. and Joshua are examples of supercomputers with personality, so is the supercomputer that Gus Gorman built in the 1983 film Superman 3.  Gus runs out of unemployment checks and is forced to get a job.  While at work he learns he has a talent for programming computers.  He uses his programming ability to embezzle funds from his employer, only to get caught and blackmailed into using his programming ability to make his employer even more money. As part of the arrangement his employer agrees to build him his supercomputer, which his employer identifies as another money making opportunity.  The only one that can get in the way is Superman so they order the supercomputer to destroy him.    Gus has second thoughts, and saves Superman by swallowing the screw that allows the computer to stay on.  The supercomputer wants to live, demonstrating it has intelligence, and turns on everyone in the room:

 

This video is unavailable.

 

In the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) 9000, a seemingly omniscient computer and the film's most expressive and emotional figure, uses artificial intelligence to stay alive:

 

 

You can also use the Home Automation theme to begin turning your habitat into your own version of the bat cave like this guy:

 

 

As mentioned, her S.A.R.A.H. (Self Actuated Residential Habitat) doesn't need to be so fancy.  Your Home Automation project can involve adding security door locks from close range (<10 cm) RFID, and Keypad), temperature control, humidity control, LCD touch panel controls, heating and cooling controls, air quality control, voice recognition technology, sleep detection (IR movement), voice speech technology using phonemes for natural speech, network accessibility, client-server model, and more.

 

The MATRIX Creator: A Partner for Home Automation with the Raspberry Pi:

 

The MATRIX Voice, is a Raspberry Pi-based or stand-alone dev board that allows makers and advanced industrial hardware developers to create voice-control apps easily. Helping it to do this is voice recognition integration with Google Voice and Amazon Alexa. It offers a radial array of 7 MEMS microphones connected to a Xilinx Spartan6 FPGA and 64 Mbit SDRAM, which, when combined provides developers with the opportunity to integrate custom voice and other hardware-accelerated machine learning algorithms right onto the silicon. The MATRIX Creator is like the Voice but only bigger.  It is used for fast and affordable development of functional hardware devices such as drones, robots, DIY Amazon Alexa speakers, etc.  Stuff that would make it suitable for Home Automation projects!

 

“The MATRIX Creator is an all-inclusive hardware device that connects to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi and provides a means for any developer around the world to start making machine learning, computer vision, and Internet of Things applications within minutes. .....We see it as being a building block for the democratization of IoT and AI." - Rodolfo Saccoman, CEO of AdMobilize, the company behind the MATRIX

“MATRIX Creator is great as both a teaching and a development tool, aimed at anything from a middle school computer class to hobbyists and universities.” -  Rodolfo Saccoman, CEO of AdMobilize, the company behind the MATRIX

I showed Alfred Gonzalez-Cuzan, Innovation Manager at Matrix Labs, Sean and Connor Miller's 4D IoT Game Engine Blog by during CES 2019 in Vegas: A Most Excellent Adventure!   It uses the MATRIX creator in a unique and interesting way.   I also gave him a heads up to check out the element14 presents that was to be released on Friday, the last day of CES 2019:

 

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"We loved the element14 presents video that came out last week! That game is amazing and you guys did a great job making the video and explaining everything." - Alfred Gonzalez-Cuzan, Innovation Manager at Admobilize & Matrix Labs

 

Now Sean and Connor are working on project in support of the Home Automation competition!

 

Follow Sean and Connor's Progress:

 

 

Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+MATRIX Creator
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Like the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, it boasts a 64-bit quad core processor running at 1.4 GHz, dual-band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wireless LAN, and Bluetooth 4.2/BLE. The dual-band wireless LAN comes with modular compliance certification.

802.15.4-compliant short-range wireless radios like Z-Wave, ZigBee and Thread. The device has 3D accelerometer, 3D gyroscope, 3D magnetometer, temperature sensor, ultraviolet sensor, pressure sensor, humidity sensor and 8 MEMS microphone array.

 

Your Monthly Theme

 

The Monthly Theme You Voted For: Home Automation
Octopod: Smart Home IOT Project Smarter Access Control using Arduino MKR WAN 1300 boards

 

Your Chance to Win

 

Be Original
Stick to the Theme
  • You could come up with a clever name that make's your project memorable!
    • This project is your baby! Part of the fun of bringing something new into the world is coming up with a name.
  • Your project could introduce something new or that is not commercially available or affordable!
  • If you have an idea for a project that doesn't fit the current theme then submit your idea in the comments section of the monthly poll.
List the Steps
Submit Video Proof
  • Provide the steps you took to complete your project (text, video, or images).
    • This could be a step by step how-to-guide, vlog, schematics, coding, napkin drawings, voice narration, or whatever you think will be useful!
  • If it doesn't work that's fine, this is more about the journey than the end product.
  • A short video is all that is required but you can shoot as much video as you like.
  • You are encouraged to be creative and have as much fun as possible!

 

 

First Place Winners

 

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Your Project, Your Ideas!

 

 

About Project14
Directions

Every month you'll have a new poll where you'll get to decide an upcoming project competition, based on your interests, that will take place a couple of months in advance. Themes are broad in scope so that everyone can participate regardless of skill set.

 

What are Monthly Themes?

  • Every month (around the 14th of each month) a new theme will be posted on Project14.
  • Submit your ideas (proposals) for your projects to get feedback from the rest of the community.
  • Submit a project entry in the Theme space once you start working on it.

 

What are Monthly Theme Polls?

  • Every month (around the 14th of each month) there is a project theme poll.
  • Vote on which project competition you want to see for the following upcoming theme.
    • The themes voted on during the previous poll decided the upcoming theme.
    • If you submit an idea for a theme that is not used then it can still be used in a future poll.
  • Themes comments and ideas from the comments section of the project theme poll.



Step 1: Log in or register on element14, it's easy and free.

Step 2: Post in the comments section below to begin a discussion on your idea. Videos, pictures and text are all welcomed forms of submission.

Step 3: Submit a blog post of your progress on your project by the end of the month.  You are free to submit as many blog entries as you like until the beginning of the next theme.

 

Be sure to include video proof of your project!

 

Visit:  Home Automation or tag your project blog homeautomationch

 

 

You have until March 14th End of Day to submit your completed project!

 

A jury consisting of your peers will judge project submissions!

In the comments below: Let Us Know Your Home Automation Project Ideas!

 

Use Whatever Components You Like! We're also Giving Away a Limited Number of MATRIX Creators (with a Raspberry Pi Model A+) for Projects Ideas that Use Them!

Parents

  • I don’t know if this fits within the scope of “Home Automation” or if the looming deadline rules us out for hardware support, but a few of us at K-State Libraries have been scheming to build a Matrix Creator-enhanced Raspberry Pi.

     

    Our library building, the central hub of our university and student body life, recently suffered from a fire just as we were planning a moonshot renovation with Makerspace and Innovation Lab.  The entire building was considered a loss, the interior gutted, and employees displaced.  After dusting ourselves off, several of us in IT have been making a grassroots effort for the integration of voice assistant technology (with a heavy emphasis on accessibility needs) and showcase that to students.  Our building will eventually include a casual space known as “the living room”, one where technology isn’t exactly out in the open.  Of a number of projects we’ve been considering in the absence of centralized facilities and budget is to use Matrix Creator and Raspberry Pi devices with a display to converse with curious students (in various gathering locations and, eventually, the “living room”) and suggest books and reading material they might like based on their expressed interests and responses.  Much of what we offer right now is online through web and discovery services; it’s been a hope of mine to tie a digital voice assistant into the online catalog and filter search results based on spoken preferences, so the recent “suggest a book” idea by another in our tiny group meshes nicely with that. 

     

    We think the Matrix Creator would offer us an easier time playing with this sort of interaction as well as potentially tap the dialogue for at least some sort of visual output on a display to address accessibility needs.  My ragtag cohorts and I believe the outcome of our effort in this contest can prove the product as a great building block for other projects as well as a “check out" and training item (via several education kits we'd likely purchase out-of-pocket) for our eventual Innovation Lab.  We see this contest as a solid and fun way to develop technical proficiency and enthusiasm leading up to that.  We hope you might still have some a spare kit on the shelf and a broad enough definition behind “Home Automation” to consider us! 

     

    Best wishes to everyone.

  • in reply to jsheldon

    We had toyed with how this system might work to get peoples' attention and chat with them, myself preferring the Red Dwarf "Talkie Toaster" approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec  &  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7folKbch3U8

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