[TriEmbed] Anyone done much work with home automation?

[John Vaughters]

I have not dealt with the links you have referred, but I will be checking them out. Let me throw out some projects, part Open Source and part Pay, but the pay is based on Open Source Mango Automation which some may know. You can still get the Open Source Version and it works quite well on linux or windows. Basically it works on the Apache TomCat framework. I actually ended up using ScadaBR which is a Brazilian fork of Mango and has been kept up to date, but if I were to ever consider building a low cost Scada System for someone, I would consider the DGLogik. The interfaces are incredible. Tablet or PC. The back end is a closed source next step of Mango Automation Open Source and the cost is very reasonable for the capability. The Open Source versions are GREAT for collecting data and graphing it and also have some Graphic page capability.

http://www.dglogik.com/


Having said that, as I said I am using ScadaBR on Linux. You can connect to Arduino's in several methods. For Simplicity, I created a simple serial to interface and write it to a file and ScadaBR Reads the files. Then I can echo commands to Arduino via scripts. There is another slightly more complicated method, which I have verified works great. That is to use ModBus slave on Arduino. If I really needed a quicker response time, I would go this route, but that is not necessary for me. I have also played around with using MySQL and SQLite as interfaces and it works quite well also. 

My main goal is Energy Management, not really the kool stuff that I would like to have, but just haven't put the time into it. I also use Solid State Relays that you can directly connect to an Arduino safely for both DC or AC switches. Just make sure you get correct current and circuit snubbing options for your uses. I have some X-10 stuff too, and wanted to use them, but I never got around to setting up the Linux software for it. There are several projects that cover X-10 in Linux. Over all, the money I saved in open source solutions allowed me to spend on Solid State relays. It is still a work in progress too.

Have Fun and Good Luck!

John Vaughters
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