DIY Self-monitored Smart Home for Vacation Time

Story

It’s common to talk about smart home as the tool that makes your everyday life at home easier and more comfortable, but smart home can also be a great help a lot to set your mind at ease when you’re away for a long period of time, on a vacation and possibly outside of the country. Being able to keep an eye on what’s happening in your house and be alerted when something happens is very helpful on keeping you relaxed and reassured during your off time.

We propose you today to guide you into setting up the necessary tools and automation to have your house monitor itself for you and be remotely accessible at anytime.

FEATURES

• Turn an old webcam into a smart cam that will warn you of any detected motion, take regular snapshots as well as on-demand visual reports

• Sound sensor to detect any unusual activity in the house

• Old smartphone used to monitor the entrance door or a sensitive room

• Remotely control lights to make the house appear occupied

• Trigger an alarm to warn neighbors and scare off intruders

• Remotely control HVAC appliances to come back in a welcoming interior climate

Most smart devices on the market offer similar features but are very costly solutions. If you’re not willing to invest in such products, or if you have already one or two of these devices but want to implement new features for cheap, this project is for you.

You can make this project in around one hour, with a $50 budget and with no specific skills.

Step 1: REQUIRED COMPONENTS

• Raspberry Pi // ~$25-$35

• 16 Gb SD card // ~$8

• Sound sensor // ~$2

• Old webcam // ~$0

• Old smartphone // ~$0

• WeMo Plug // ~$25 OR RF socket + RF transceiver // ~$8/unit

• Optional: MicroBot Push button pusher // ~$49

Step 2: SET UP YOUR PROTA PI

You first need to build the smart hub that will control the automation of your ring bell and connect all devices together. Prota OS for Raspberry Pi is our free smart hub OS which is very easy to install. In no time you will turn your Raspberry Pi into a smart home automation hub!

You can download Prota OS here. Then burn it on the SD card. We made an easy guide you can follow to set up your Prota Pi.

Alternatively, you can check this Instructables.

Step 3: INSTALL YOUR SOUND SENSOR

A sound sensor can be a great way to quickly detect any problem in your house. Both an intrusion or the smoke alarm turning on will be directly detected by the sound sensor which can then warn you and ask the webcam to take a picture to assess the situation.

Setting such sensor is very easy with your Prota Pi. First connect your sensor to your Prota Pi with jumper wires as follow

• Connect the GND pin of your sensor to PIN #3 of your Raspberry Pi

• Connect the VCC pin of your sensor to PIN #1 of your Raspberry Pi

• Connect the DOUT (digital output) pin of your sensor to PIN #12 (GPIO18) of your Raspberry PI

For more detail: DIY Self-monitored Smart Home for Vacation Time