The house is wired with cat5 networking with gigabit switches. This supports the core data network as well as the 1-wire senor network and a couple of phone extensions.
Media
The hub of my home from a media perspective is still my Mythtv server, which has been running on various hardware platforms since may 2003, and has been progressively upgraded. You can see the stats below
The Mythtv backend now sits on a Raspberry Pi with a twin tuner freeview TV USB stick.
The main tool for watching recorded programmes and Live TV is now XBMC rather than the Mythtv frontend.
XBMC runs on the android phones and tablets around the home, and also on a Raspberry Pi connected to the main TV. Mythtv frontend is installed on my ubuntu powered laptop for the odd occasion I need that functionality. Setting and managing recordings is all done via the Mythweb client shown above. There is an event set to tweet when a recording is completed
Completed recording of Speed with Guy Martin () on 12384 at 2014-01-04T20:05:00
— gazzas_house (@gazzas_house) January 4, 2014
I have had my music stored as MP3 in a library and accessible since the late 90s, and movies and TV shows since 2003. All are accessible though XBMC and the myth frontend as recordings above.
Music is also available from a web front end jukebox called Ampache.
This allows me to access and play anything from my music library from any Web browser. the music can be streamed or played locally on any of the Raspberry Pis in the house. I also just a music client called Justplayer on the Android devices for accessing the Ampache library.
Monitoring and Control
Energy Monitoring
I have a OpenEnergyMonitor system which consists of an arduino based transmitter station constantly monitoring the electricity usage and sending to a receiver (Nanode) which then uploads into a Mysql database. The data is available via a web interface. All hardware and software is completely open source, so no nasty data lock in to corporations |
| The EmonCMS dashboard |
 |
| The EmonCMS energy Explorer showing electricity usage |
 |
| The power & temps showing for the house |
Also hooked into this server is a network of small 1-wire sensors which are built into RJ45 plugs and plugged into the network in each room. The data from these is recorded by EmonCMS above and also by my home automation app
Home automation
The home automation app is described at some length by me here, and the only two major differences are that it now monitors the heating and triggers a device activation when a temperature threshold is reached. This allows me to record when my heating is on and off. The second is that the system now sends a tweet whenever a device is activated or deactivated
The status of Heating has changed to 0 using Home Automation
— gazzas_house (@gazzas_house) January 5, 2014
In addition, every hour the system tweets the days power usage and current temperatures in each room as well as outside.Weather
I have a WH-8081 weather station (available from Clas Ohlson & Maplin etc) with a wireless display.Data from this is harvested by a Raspberry Pi running Pywws, and uploaded to Wunderground and summary data available on my website.
Data is also tweeted hourly
15:37 GMT: Temperature: 5.4°C, Wind: N, 2 mph (ave), 7 mph (gust), Humidity: 83%, Rain (hourly) 0.0 mm, Pressure: 1014 hPa, falling quickly
— BrockleyWhinsWeather (@brockleywhinsw) January 5, 2014
along with a 12 hour forecast
15:37 GMT: Forecast for the next 12 hours: Fairly fine, showery later
— BrockleyWhinsWeather (@brockleywhinsw) January 5, 2014.
2 comments:
Your blog is really very descriptive in which you have described about several techniques how to choose top digital home.Please keep sharing.
Vancouver home automation | Security vancouver | Best Security Vancouver
Post a Comment