41–50 of 60 posts
My weekend hacking on IP cameras turned into a startup: Dropcam ( http://www.dropcam.com ). Dropcams can push alert your iPhone on motion or sound and they store up to 30 days of video. When I was a kid, I had the Firecracker serial-to-wireless-to-X10 gadget hooked up to a PC running Microsoft Agent/batch scripts. I could voice control my ceiling fan, lights, etc like Star Trek (at least, if the Enterprise had ceilin…
Did you modify the actual Axis firmware?
My entire apartment is Z-Wave and I have a custom written iPad app that lets me control most everything. I've been considering putting some of those cheap 7" android tablets into my walls, but I don't own the place, so I guess I'll have to wait. X10 is a horrible joke, don't go there. Z-Wave is fantastic though. Here are some zwave links: http://www.z-wave.com/modules/Products/ http://www.smarthomeusa.com/search.php?…
Can you remark on how much these things cost you, all said and done?
I had X10 all over the place when I was living in the US. It's quite cheap and not too bad of an investment, especially if you are just renting the place. Now I am back in Europe and I left all that equipment behind in Wisconsin? Is anybody interested? I was planning to sell it on craigslist but maybe a fellow HNer will have a better use.
Totally interested, yes. My email is in my profile.
Every plasma TV in the house also has a Mac Mini at a minimum, some also have Tivos and Apple TVs.
Intelligent video cameras around the house can detect people or vehicles approaching up the driveway or around other perimeter areas and send me email alerts, video clips and/activate other things via the Indigo/Insteon system.
We have a dual-zone heating/cooling setup. The thermostats are Venstars with an Insteon RF interface. Setpoints are selected based on time of day, outdoor temps, and occupancy (sensed via motion detectors and/or our presence at our other house (eg: if there is activity at house X, we can keep house Y from initiating common events)).
I have a Redeye wifi to IR iPod base station thing for controlling the TV and AV gear we spend most time around. This is mostly accessed through an I* app, but can also be controlled via an http interface.
From a web interface, my iPhone or my iPad I can turn any light on or off, change temperature setpoints, read status of various sensors, or control iTunes, all through the Indigo app. Through a separate web interface I've written, I can see recent events from the security cameras and access control systems, see live video, lock/unlock certain doors and so forth.
There is a Russound multi-zone amp and zone selector in the basement ( though we mostly just use the amp now). A combination of airport expresses and rogue amoeba apps allows me to route audio from pretty much any device/point in the house to any other device or room. There are in-ceiling speakers in the bedroom and master bath, speakers in the garage, and on the back deck, all on separate zones.
I've run about 2 miles of cable (cat5 and rg6) throughout the house to create a communications backbone.
I'm probably missing a few things, but the summary of it is that the houses mostly adapt around us for things like lights and hvac. We can listen to music anyplace we happen to be ( there is almost always music playing at our house).
The current incarnation of the system is the result of hacking around with HA for about a dozen years now trying different things to see what works. When I first started doing this my wife was basically like 'NFW' and now she wouldn't want to live without it.
The best hack, imo, is a simple one - running a HD projector and 72" screen. It's only for movies and sporting events, b/c it's too weird to watch anything non-cinematic on a big screen.
Finally, it's not a hack, but i'll throw in a plug for the Logitech Harmony remote - it's the best we've found for set up and control of our HT system. I can't really comment on it directly, though, because my wife is in charge of setting it up;)
I hacked my lights and some power outlets. I can turn them on by flipping a simple switch. I also hacked a lock onto my door and hacked some layers of paint on the ceiling. Then I paid some people to install a temperature control hack so that air conditioning can be controlled based on a heat sensor. And some other people came in and hacked some wires to different ports near the floor. They put a box in the alcove wh…
Just to point out that each of these things were ingenious hacks at the time they were invented.
I got a TED (www.theenergydetective.com) and took 3 years to get from a $250 electric bill to a $40. Later I did a similar thing for heat efficiency. Though I suppose that's not what you were asking about.
Soldered the air conditioner remote to a relay connected to the parallel port on my computer. Whenever the script pulled down new DM's from my username with special commands, it would briefly flip the relay turning the ac on or off. Also set up a scheduler to turn it on 30 minutes before i woke up.
About a year ago we designed a system/protocol called 'SHET' (https://github.com/18sg/SHET) which consists of a central server that links many clients together. Each client can present many properties (get/set), actions (like methods, that can be called), and events (that other clients can listen for). This was implemented by me in python/twisted and makes controlling/monitoring computers around the house really easy.
About a month ago, someone wrote a system called SHETSource (https://github.com/18sg/SHETSource) which allows us to easily connect arduinos onto SHET. Since we don't all leave our computers on all the time, we have one arduino connected to the 'server' (old macbook) near the switch, which arduinos in our rooms connect to via the spare wires in the ethernet (if you only want 100Mbps, two of the wires are spare).
In my room at least, I have a pir, 3 hacked light controllers, a servo and two switches connected via SHETSource, which allows me to write all the logic in python.
Basically, we've written a hacking framework.
I got a TED (www.theenergydetective.com) and took 3 years to get from a $250 electric bill to a $40. Later I did a similar thing for heat efficiency. Though I suppose that's not what you were asking about.