1000² Smart Home

Description

A bit of history I started to automate things using the traditional computer parallel port and a literal bucket full of relays which drove my thirst to more complicated things that could operate independently. I jumped on to microcontroller projects and a few years later I made a small RS485 network. Moving taught me the important lesson of breaking free of the wires: some devices simply need to be wireless, while the plethora of others could go either way, saving the user from the ugly and complicated cabling experience. This is not an easy job, though. 1000² Is my new ambitious project: do a lot of home automation while spending 1000 euro and 1000 hours working on it. Well, hopefully not that long time, but a budget and time limit give a good motivation to get things going. Plus, both constraints avoid the hobby trap of infinitely fiddling with details.

Project Logs

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First prototype
electrobob • 05/23/2017 at 20:05 • 0 comments

More info at http://www.electrobob.com/1000-1000-hardware/
Which radio?
electrobob • 05/23/2017 at 20:04 • 0 comments

The radio used to transmit the data between nodes is one of the crucial parts of the system. As mentioned in the Lessons learned, the NRF23L01 or RFM75 was a good candidate, but eventually failed to meet the needs, so I chose the RFM69. Truth be told, I believe the perfect radio is a combination between the two and some bonuses.
More info at http://www.electrobob.com/1000-1000-hardware/
Which microcontroller?
electrobob • 05/23/2017 at 20:01 • 0 comments

Which microcontroller?
When I began this project, I was long given up on the ATMega and ATTtiny micro, with some exceptions, as they are not really justified in a hobby environment. Therefore, I have initially intended to make my nodes using an ATXMEGA32E5, which I believe is an ideal device for sensor nodes, due to the various and low power peripherals. However, it soon turned out that for some devices I would need more flash, but the family stops at 32K and a package change is required for more memory. So I dropped it in favour of the new SAMD21, ARM cortex M0, which comes with more flexible package and flash options. This device burns a little bit more in sleep, but still tolerable. And a 128K flash and 16K RAM version costs on par with the lousy old atmega328 with tons of extra features (way better ADC, DAC, more PWM, more timers, more I/O, more flash, more RAM, faster core, lower uA/MHz, RTC, more SPI, mor UART, more I2C….i’ll stop here).
More info at http://www.electrobob.com/1000-1000-hardware/