"Home automation" covers a whole lot of different areas, services and capabilities. I want to implement (most of) the following in our home.
Features:
• behind-mirror display
• integral bathroom scales
• touch-panels in kitchen
• powered curtains
• environment control
• and more hardware projects
Communications
• gigabit ethernet
• VOIP voice communications
• video intercom
• file server
Multimedia
• multichannel TV recorder
• multizone speakers
• universal remote
• lounge room starscape
• Internet radio
Monitoring
• automatic watering
• moisture sensors
• electricity monitoring
• water monitoring
• gas monitoring
• home security system (ZoneMinder)
Garage
• controlled garage door
Read the UserStory to get an idea of where I'm going with this, or check out the WorkInProgress.
Overview
I am trying to get into home automation as I'm fascinated by the possibilities: an intelligent home which recognizes and adapts to its occupants, modifying the environment to best use the resources at hand; non-intrusive, pervasive technologies and a self-configuring, secure and ubiquitous information-mesh with auto-discovery of services. In "plainspeak", the kind of thing you learn to use very quickly and soon take for granted.
I also want ecologically sensible and planet-friendly solutions and experiments - wiring up your home (and subsequently your life) should use less energy because the intelligent home is smart enough to take advantage of environmental efficiency-tuning.
I'm renting, which means anything rigged up has to be just as easily removed without permanent damage, but the technology these days allows exactly that. It also means I'm unlikely to be able to run fibre-optics inside the walls, embed an LCD in the kitchen bench or behind the bathroom mirror, or rewire the electricity grid to take a feed from a solar-panel or/and wind turbine array. Perhaps when (if?) I buy my own place ...
Self-configuring, self-healing, secure, pervasive, ubiquitous information-mesh
(The longest heading ever.) I have a particular requirement for my network of intelligent (PCs), semi-intelligent (embedded controllers) and simple devices (remote switches and sensors) -- they should work seamlessly together, be able to automatically reconfigure quite quickly, and provide discoverable services to one another in a secure, non-intrusive way.
"Ubiquity" in this context refers to the services being discoverable and available via a number of different mechanisms -- i.e. remote control/reporting interfaces via web/HTTP, IM bots, VOIP, voice-activation and other interfaces.
In practice this means a number of things:
- The wireless (802.11g) computer network should be secure (WPA with PSK) and self-configuring (Zeroconf)
- Services should be published via Avahi/DNS-SD (printers, music libraries, fileshares, web-interfaces)
- * Service-monitoring and self-repair should be running whenever possible
Eco considerations
There are a couple of reasons to try to be as energy efficient as possible when it comes to electronics and electrical goods: fiscal and ecological responsibility.
Electricity, for now at least, costs money and a few devices left on or on standby can quickly add up. In the past I've tended to have at least a couple of PCs on at any one time, and subsequently our power bill was always quite large -- that is money I could be spending on other things!
As for the impact we're having on poor Starship Earth, we need to increase efficiency just to continue life-support for our growing global population. Yup, I'm a fan of R. Buckminster Fuller's ephemeralization and intelligent designs -- always "doing more with less" and taking the full system into consideration "holistically".