Home monitoring system

Story

The idea

There are many beautiful and interesting projects in here, things well done who have inspired me to build my own project.

I've always loved & liked the idea of monitoring and controlling things and the smart home concept is already a well known concept.home monitoring system

The idea of this project will encourage people to make their homes and business more smart and more secure, to offer comfort and protection in their homes.

The project

This is a stand alone project, meaning no internet connection is required (like blynk , azure, cayenne, ubidots and other Internet based projects) for a minimum operation. The Internet connection is used for weather status & prediction only.

The concept is very simple and easy to follow:

  • each room has a DHT22 sensor for temp & humidity measuring and an arduino nano board with an unique address;
  • there is a DHT22 sensor out of the house for outside temperature and humidity values;
  • each room has an android tablet as a control panel where the following data are displayed:
  •  temperature and humidity values in the current room;
    - Arduino, Raspberry Pi status (on or off) and router connectivity;
    - notification(s) from the system;
    - wake-up alarm;
    - system voice state (active, partial active or inactive);
    - temperature values from the other rooms and outside value;
    - weather prediction;
    
    • at a specific adjustable time (from 10 seconds to 2 hours), each tablet sends a measurement request to raspberry pi;
    • raspberry pi forwards the request for each arduino and receives data from each sensor;
    • the protocol used for communication between arduinos and raspberry pi is an I2C serial;

The I2C

The I2C bus is not working with long wires but with a few tricks there is possible to link the arduinos and the raspberry pi together.

The Arduinos and raspberry pi are connected with a 5 wires cable like in the bellow diagram.

The android tablets

In each room I have a wall mounted android tablet, WIFI connected with the router. Each android tablet runs an API 19 apk named HMS, as a launcher developed by me with Eclipse Mars. Initially I wanted to develop a customized android OS, based on free codes of Git repositories on android, but it's above my knowledge :P.

For weather status & prediction I use this library, with customized weather images and conditions text (translated in Romanian).

With a simple finger swipe I can switch between different layouts of my apk (the main view, temperatures and weather prediction view and the settings view).

Future intentions

Front door videos broadcast on tablets and smart TV when doorbell rings;

temperatures control

appointments, birthdays, reminders from synced google Calendar

Updates

Because this project changes from week to week, bellow is a list with the recent updates:

  • – custom voice notifications are now available – week 45/2016 – this voice notifications uses TTS engine available in English only;
  • – Inspired by IT movie where I saw a control panel, I developed for the android tablets' app its own daydream service featuring a spinning logo – week 46/2016 – avoiding to have a permanent black screen on the all day charging tablets, I developed a daydream service which will show the time and room's current temperature.
  • Main screen view has a new layout – week 47/2016 – and I dropped the weather screen view from my app, because of inexact weather forecasts reason (yahoo). I have to find an another weather provider. This new layout (see bellow) has a new circular progress bar for room temperature and two buttons for setting the room temperature. This project is not a monitoring system anymore because I can control my room temperature.

Schematics schematic home monitoring system


About The Author

Ibrar Ayyub

I am an experienced technical writer with a Master's degree in computer science from BZU Multan University. I have written for various industries, mainly home automation and engineering. My writing style is clear and simple, and I am skilled in using infographics and diagrams. I am a great researcher and am able to present information in a well-organized and logical manner.

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