Parts relatively inexpensive, significant time & labor involved, but great learning experience:
I have built an Arduino Gateway, 9 Arduino end nodes, connecting to a Windows 7 PC running OpenHAB 1.7.0 via MQTT. Gateway & end nodes connect via RFM69 wireless transceiver mini-boards. Most Nodes have a DHT11 temp/humidity sensor. Several nodes have solid state relays that can turn AC devices off & on via a node button, OpenHAB user interface switches or OpenHAB rules. Other node functions: open / close garage door & detect open / close state, Turn TV off / on. One node is a bare bones Arduino that can be powered by batteries. I developed rules to simulate home occupation thru toggling lights & TV off & on .
I have also developed an arduino based system for my house, although i don’t use mqtt. All of my remote inputs - for motion temps etc are connected via ethernet using POE. I manufactured my own stepper driver boards and associatted parts to drive dimmers and two arduinos handle the outputs via port expanders to something like 80 relays.
Yes alot of time but great, of course there is some issues but all in all pretty good. This is my first attempt at this and I must say it was difficult to trouble shoot as finding info for the problems i was having was basically not possible via any of the forums etc. I spent weeks trying things in an attempt to get them to work when all i needed was an example of code formatting!!! Very frustrating!!!
As I said though it does work and I currently rely on it fully to operate my house as I do not have a single light switch in my house.
Not quite, Etherten’s using POE run a custom input shield that has what ever sensor I like plugged into it, like temp - onewire - humidity, motion sensors, light sensors. These then send a UDP packet back to OH on either a time based interval for things like temp or an event based trigger like motion. I use Regex to get the result at OH but OH is very patchy with its REGEX results. In fact i would say that the REGEX engine barely works at all. I have to start and stop seperate UDP instances/ports on the arduinos for each Input as OH/REGEX will not parse the incoming data from a string anything like it claims it will.
Sure, you could show a picture or two of the boards. To transfer commands & sensor readings, MQTT binding has worked very steadily with the Arduino, RFM69, Windows, & OpenHAB.
Hi guys.
What do you think about following kit: ARDUINO + WiFi Shield + 5" TFT Touch Screen?
E.g. ARDUINO DUO or other ARM-based + WiFi Shield (ESP8266) + 5" TFT Touch + DHT22 or similar.
It’s attractive due to simplicity and relatively low price for verifying my idea.
I want simply to create a GUI with a couple of buttons + text + icons, read info from sensor and send/receive data over WiFi to OpenHAB (via MQTT or REST perhaps). E.g. function similar to graphical Thermostats, like Nest or Honeywell.
I didn’t work with Arduino before, but with some other ARM based MC - STM32F. There are many videos in Internet, therefore I have some questions:
Does it makes sense to deal with Arduino, or better to take my lovely starter Kit for STM32, connect it to WiFi module and write on C in my Environment? How good are the libraries for GUI and WiFi for Arduino?
And really stupid question - Maybe it is worth to take instead a cheap Android Tablet for 50$ and use OpenHAB app or similar? The only problem is that it would be problematic to connect external sensors and loads to it (It might be possible to use internal battery temperature sensor with appropriate offset correction to measure ambient Temp, but that’s all)
PS - My plan is not to invest too much time into Hardware at this stage, but prove the idea. If it works (especially reaction time and usability requirements) I will probably get this done in more nicer way with appropriate PCB design and 3D - housing.
Thanks for your question & interest. My approach to Home Automation has only used Arduinos. I have (successfully) only used the Arduino with RFM69 wireless transceivers, not the WIFI shield. I have not used a TFT Touch Screen. I wish you well in answering your question.
