Smart homes

[Graystone]

I'm researching this area as a side project, maybe wire up a room or two as an experiment. Major networking involved, I'm trying to try to recreate a rudimentary version of Ironman's Jarvis or Caprica's Serge.

Anybody have an information or reference material?

[Ben Banana]

1. What kind of features do you want your "Smart Home" to have?

2. You need to decide what hardware you'll utilize for the "central hub." It must be capable of handling/processing the various input and sensors rigged with the house. There's a wide variety of interfacing adapters you can find to assist with assembling the rig.

3. Although there's a lot of neat open-source stuff for smart home projects like this, I hope you have some experience with programming.

 

Open Source Kits

http://wosh.sourceforge.net/

http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/

 

Voice Recognition

http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/

http://www.voxforge.org/

 

Surveillance

http://www.zoneminder.com/

 

Storage Management

http://www.freenas.org/

 

Media & Entertainment

http://xbmc.org/

http://www.mythtv.org/

 

A book:

http://www.apress.com/open-source/linux-and-unix/9781430227786

 

And a dedicated website:

http://www.linuxsmarthome.com/

 

Those are just a few links I quickly pulled up in a matter of minutes. There's some tutorials out there about hashing your own "multi-touch screen interface" together, which might be interesting.

[Graystone]

1. What kind of features do you want your "Smart Home" to have?

2. You need to decide what hardware you'll utilize for the "central hub." It must be capable of handling/processing the various input and sensors rigged with the house. There's a wide variety of interfacing adapters you can find to assist with assembling the rig.

3. Although there's a lot of neat open-source stuff for smart home projects like this, I hope you have some experience with programming.

 

1. As many features as my place is capable of handling. I'm inexperienced with most of the things that I'd be working with, but it'd be nice to have some contraptions for windows, blinds, thermostats, fans, lights, etc. Don't care for too much surveillance equipment. Whatever I can build myself instead of buying would be preferable. I'd like to put some automated processes into it such as open blinds at dawn, dim the lights when there's lots of natural lighting, open/close windows to help cool/heat the house for fresh air and energy saving. Connectivity with email, music, phone, weather, etc. Maybe install simple mics/speakers, light/temp sensors throughout the house.

 

2. I have a decent computer I built myself a year ago, AMD quad core processor, only 4gb ram I plan on upgrading. I really plan to build a new one, AMD runs too hot, the case blows and its all on a microATX motherboard. With this in mind I can build the new one with focus on whatever would best suit a high sensory input network. I don't know much about networking hardware, perhaps there's specialized equipment for these types of systems?

 

3. I have some experience with a handful of different programming languages, mostly simple logic stuff. Almost no experience with programming networks, though I'm eager to learn from the ground up.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Graystone