Mini room server for music, temperature, relay, presence detection etc

Hardware Home Automation
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Hi,

I was thinking with the way OpenHAB is set up, we are not tied to Z-wave devices etc. So what if one took a Raspberry Pi (possibly Zero) and made a mini-server of sorts for each room. So for instance, set it up as such:

  • Music and Text To Speech - Either some kind of squeezebox client, or just stream via a linux client, possibly MDP. Could be connected to a diy mini amplifier and a speaker. Can be used for notifications as well.
  • Bluetooth Low Energy adapter - which could be used for presence location
  • Sensors - A couple one-wire sensors connected to GPIO pins for temperature and humidity, and perhaps light level and PIR motion sensor.
  • Relay - One or two relays connected to GPIO to control something, such as a heater or fan or lamp or similar.
  • Network - Use the onboard ethernet port or wifi adapter

For instance, in my main bedroom, I have a TV, which is using a raspberry Pi for Plex, but all the extra functionality of the RPi is wasted. Then in my son’s room, I have a Z-wave relay and temp sensor, and an old iphone as a white noise machine. It could all be collated into one little device.

I was thinking this could be done with some kind of PCB breakout board for the RPi for the extras so that they could easily be deployed in each room, similar to a Sonos or something but dramatically cheaper and with more sensors. Could even put it in a speaker box.

Of course, this would all be controlled via Openhab. MQTT for the Sensors and relays, not sure about the others, but should be easy enough.

Any one know of anything like this or willing to join me in the project?

2 Likes
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Nice idea, somehow similar to how I have set up my system.

There is one central Pi 2 in the cellar holding all the core functionality, and small sensor installations in each story of the house. They report their data via the REST interface because that was what I got to work first, but will be switched to MQTT soon.

The next step would be to add actor functionality to the “sensor” Pis, maybe controlling the window blinds and so on. All it waits for is some more time to actually build the hardware :smile:

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Well I went and got a RPi2 (actually BananaPi) and a Bluetooth LE dongle to get started. I want the BLE to notice when I am close because my Pebble watch uses BLE, and hopefully it can start music playing. If I can do that, the rest should come easier. Of course, this is once I finish the Arduino garden sprinkler system. :wink: