On Fri, 2009-04-24 at 14:19 +1200, Brett Davidson wrote: > This approach interests me. I gather then that you run the Arduinos > locally in each room/area with sensors attached to these and then use > Zigbee and/or ethernet to connect the Arduinos back to your Linux > server.
That's correct. A Zigbee USB adapter on the host and nodes scattered around. > What software are you running on the Linux server? No official software yet, just dumping data into PostgreSQL and bunches of Python scripts currently. > For that matter, what software are you running on the Arduinos? :-) So far just things hacked together from examples around the 'net. It's serial communication so basically just broadcasting "Temperature is 20 degrees", "Switch Pushed", "Motion detected" etc. to the server and then "Turn light on", "Send SMS" etc. back. > Running wires etc is all old hat. Wires are handy if you already have them, annoying if you don't. That's why I'm using some Zigbee. > Unfortunately, WAF needs to be factored in. She's not really into > tinkering as much as I. :-) And I to no longer have as much free time > for this as I used to. :-( Indeed. The thing about having Arduinos/controllers around the place is that you can do local processing at the same time as remote. For example, switch pushed = turn on light and/or notify server. You can be completely self contained, completely reliant on the server, or a bit of both. This approach lends itself to progressive enhancement without breaking normal expected functionality. At this stage it's very much hacked up bits and pieces, we recently shifted so amongst that and others things I haven't had a lot of time to do anything with it. When I get some time I'll be doing something more with it and sharing more etc. hads
