What is a smart home?
The term smart home is ubiquitous with an IoT embedded ecosystem where devices talk to each other and exhange infomation about its enviorment. I've been working on a home automation system myself, and rather than use the many free home assistance platforms, I wanted to make one myself.
The core of an Smart Home
At the core of a Smart home ecosystem is 3 main things.
- A Controller: The user or admin which views all information, and can control all aspects of the "smart home"
- A Network Hub: The central processing system between the nodes and the clients of the network. NOTE: in some Smart homes there is no hub, and the typology is closer to an Ad-Hoc network
- Edge Nodes: the many embedded systems that transmit infomation or wait for information to perform their task
The goal was not just to automate the many different areas in my home, but to also provide a little more security, and insight into the activity in my room. With an IoT system there is the possibility for voice or event based automation. This gave me the idea to aim for a large final product. My goal is to create a suggestion system on top of my event based smart home system, which would suggest automations based on my behavior and patterns. This would be great in the case of automations that I had not thought of, or even possibly new features to add to the system
I choose to use a python Flask server as my central hub website. This will allow any user on the home network to access controls of my home automations. I created a simple dashboard website with different pages for everything I'm planning on implementing.
Roadblocks
One of the biggest issues right now is the wireless communication. Without it I can't test database inquiries or updates based on node processing systems. The goal is to have the nodes send frequenct polls with its sensor data, and log that in a database for further analytics. I've gone between a number of forms of wireless communcations, including the ESP8266-ESP01, the NRF24LO1+, and a 433 MHz wireless communications module. There are pros and cons with each but the big issue is the cross arduino / raspi talk. I'm planning on getting arduino uno's with wifi shields, or wifi enables ESP microcontroller modules. Either one will allow for each two way wifi communicaitons
My main goal was to really just make it easier to wake up in the morning. I give myself no time, and if things like lights turning on, shower turning on, coffee being made, or just a simple calendar view of today along with some content, and news. I'd love to see it suggest turning on the lights and computer when im close to home. Or reminding me to exercise if I haven't that day.