SuperHouse Automation

Posted on September 23, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

IoT Propane Tank

If you live in a remote area it is possible that you are living in an area not service by a gas connection. For many people this means relying on a propane tank. Wouldn’t it be great if you could reliably track the amount of gas remaining in your tank so that you could schedule a top up and not risk running out of gas! This project from Julio Aguirre you can turn your propane tank into a solar powered IoT device that sends you up regular information about your propane tank. Not only does it provide you information but it also automatically emails or SMS’s your gas supplier to arrange a new delivery when you are running low. To get started on this project check out the following link.

If you are looking for an Arduino board to work on this hack the team at SuperHouse automation recommends the Freetronics “Eleven” Arduino Compatible Board.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 22, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Arduino Disco Lights

If you have managed to blink an LED using an Arduino you should be able to easily build this project! ToughRocket52 has put together a fantastic instructable which teaches you how to build your own Arduino controlled disco lights. Not only do these disco lights look fantastic but you could very easily modify the project to make disco lights in any shape or form! THey would make a great addition to your smarthome. To find out more check out the following link.

If you are looking for an Arduino board to work on this hack the team at SuperHouse automation recommends the Freetronics “Eleven” Arduino Compatible Board.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 21, 2016April 22, 2020 by Jonathan Oxer — 72 Comments

#17: Home automation control with Sonoff, Arduino, OpenHAB, and MQTT

The Sonoff from Itead Studio is a fantastic little mains-switching module with a built-in ESP8266 and WiFi. If you want an easy way to control mains devices such as lamps and fans, this could be it!

Sonoff modules are preloaded with firmware that allows them to be controlled by a phone app, so they’re very easy to get started. But that’s just the beginning: using a USB-serial converter and the Arduino IDE, you can load your own software on the Sonoff and make it do your bidding. I used the Arduino IDE to load a sketch with MQTT support and OTA (over the air) updates, allowing it to be controlled by OpenHAB.

Sonoff models mentioned in this video:

Sonoff Basic (simplest version)
Sonoff TH (Temperature / Humidity version)
Slampher (lamp holder version)

Start by adding ESP8266 support to the Arduino IDE by following the instructions at github.com/esp8266/Arduino. I used the simple “Boards Manager” method.

For OTA (over the air) update support you’ll also need to install Python 2.7.

You’ll also need a USB-serial converter with support for 3.3V I/O. I used the Freetronics USB-Serial Converter (of course!), which has a switch that lets you select 3.3V or 5V mode.

The “BasicOTABlink” example shown in the video can be found at github.com/superhouse/BasicOTABlink.

The “BasicOTARelay” example shown in the video can be found at github.com/superhouse/BasicOTARelay.

For more information, a fantastic resource is Pete Scargill’s blog post about Slampher and Sonoff.

If you want to upgrade the FLASH memory on your Sonoff, check out Pete Scargill’s blog post about upgrading ESP8266 memory.

Update 24 Sep 2016: fixed the example links.

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Knock Controlled Night Light

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and stumbled around trying to turn on your light only to end up painfully bumping into things? With this project from Peter Javorsky you can build your own night light which will turn on with a simple knock.

The project uses a piezo sensor to detect a knock and power a white LED strip meaning you can quickly and easily turn on or off your night light! The project comes with full schematics and code examples so there is nothing to stop you getting started. This would be a great addition to your smarthome. Checkout this link to find out more.

If you’re looking for a piezo module to use in this project the team at SuperHouse Automation recommends the Freetronics Piezo module. For more information and to order, visit the product page.

Want to learn more about awesome automation hacks like this? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Have an idea for a project you would like us to feature? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 19, 2016September 19, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Arduino Oscilloscope!

An oscilloscope is a must have tool for any electronics enthusiast, however, they are typically extremely expensive ($600+), so price can be a real barrier to owning your own. With this fantastic project from BramMylemans you can use an Arduino to create your own oscilloscope very cheaply!

Not only is it great to be able to build your own oscilloscope, but this project will cost next to nothing as it only requires an Arduino Leonardo and a few capacitors, diodes and resistors. Furthermore, when you are working on home automation projects having an oscilloscope can really go a long way to helping you design and debug your system. To get started building your own oscilloscope check out the following link.

If you are looking for an Arduino Leonardo compatible board the team at SuperHouse Automation recommends the Freetronics LeoStick. The LeoStick is very similar to an Arduino Leonardo, however it comes in a compact, convenient USB stick style format! Checkout the product page to find out more.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 18, 2016September 19, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Arduino WiFi Rebooter

Does your WiFi router frequently drop out and need rebooting? This can be a very frustrating problem! However, like many problems, it can easily be solved with Arduino. This awesome project from Sameer sets up an Arduino which monitors your wifi connection, whenever the wifi is down a warning buzzer sounds and then a relay turns the router off and boots it back up again a few seconds later, just as if you had rebooted it yourself! If you have a home full of IoT devices, having the WiFi go down can be a huge problem and this project goes a long way to overcoming that! This is an extremely useful project, and best of all it shouldn’t be too hard either. To get started checkout the following link.

If you’re looking for a buzzer module to use in this project the team at SuperHouse Automation recommends the Freetronics Piezo module. For more information and to order, visit the product page.

Want to learn more about awesome automation hacks like this? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Have an idea for a project you would like us to feature? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 14, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Eject-A-Bed

Do you ever struggle to get your kids out of bed in the morning? With this awesome hack from Jamie Dixon you can modify an old adjustable hospital bed so that you can control it over the internet, from anywhere in the world. With a simple push of a button on your phone or computer you can tilt the bed from a comfortable horizontal position into a vertical position sending the occupant flying out of their bed and hopefully waking them up without causing any serious injuries!

The eject a bed is controlled by Raspberry Pi 2 which talks to a servo and an Arduino. This is a really great project for learning how to control things over the internet and is sure to be lots of fun as well. For more information check out the following link or the video below.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Visualising Arduino Sensor Data

As fantastic as the Arduino IDE can be, it doesn’t provide an easy way to graph data that you receive from sensor inputs on your Arduino projects. Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to visualise in real time how the light levels inside your house have changed over time? Or be able to track fluctuations in temperature or humidity? Instructables member CrtSuznik has put together a neat set of instructions which outline how you can send data from your Arduino into Excel and visualise it. This is a really useful skill when you start to build your own smart home and are looking for ways to effectively turn sensor values into useful information! To find out more check out the following link.

If you are looking for an Arduino board to collect sensor data, the SuperHouse team recommends the Freetronics “Eleven” Arduino Compatible Board, click on the link to find out more.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 11, 2016 by Daniel de Waard — Leave a comment

Unlock Your Door With Facial Recognition

Admit it, you have at least once had the thought that it would be awesome to have a door that automatically opened itself based on facial recognition! With this cool project from Team Windows IoT you can use a Raspberry Pi and a webcam to do just that. The project is very well written and should be surprisingly straightforward if you are willing to put in some effort. This is a great example of the endless possibilities that working with IoT devices provides. To get started check out the video below or the following link.

Want to keep in the loop about the latest in home automation? Subscribing to SuperHouse Automation on YouTube is the best place to start!

Working on your own home automation projects? The team at SuperHouse Automation would love to know! Tell us about it in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Jonathan Oxer — Leave a comment

SuperHouse Vlog #43: SMEE Robot Building Competition 2016

The second annual Society of Monash Electrical Engineers Robot Building Competition saw about 150 competitors spend a weekend building robots to solve a specific challenge. Their robots needed to follow a line down a track, detect when they approached a gate, sense the colour of the gate, transmit that colour to the course control computer using an RF transmitter module, wait for the gate to be opened, proceed to the next gate, and repeat until they reached the finish line. The finish line is a line across the track that matches the colour of the last gate, so they also had to detect multiple cross lines and ignore the ones that were the wrong colour.

The challenge turned out to be too complicated to complete within the time allowed, so it was simplified a little during the competition.

Freetronics was a major sponsor of the competition, providing prize packs for the first 4 place teams plus a bonus prize pack for a “best bling” category judged by me purely on who made the coolest looking robot.