Tagged With: Electronics

Summary

After 40+ weekends my DIY smart light switches are working as part of my home automation. There is more to do but i’m pleased with what they do so far.  I’ve now built 5 switches – one for each room of my apartment except the bathroom.  These detect motion as i walk in and out of each room. The switches get/set attributes on a central mysql database and run an evolving logic python script that

• switches hue lights on in rooms during “evening/night” when there is motion
• maintains a ranked list of rooms by last activity seen
• keeps the light on in the most recent room with activity , and switches of other rooms after a period of inactivity.
• start/stop video recording of activity each room

The shared database allows for global or per room or per switch configuration of of sunrise/sunset times as well as other configurations. It also means a Grafana server can display metrics on switches and room occupancy. The shared mysql database and Grafana server run as docker containers running on a Synology NAS that also provides storage for video recordings and a central syslog service.

Future work to switches

• Adding the capacitive touch/dial to each switch so that they can be manually adjusted up/down/off etc. For the moment I’ve used a dummy cover until i can perfect the capacitive dial design.
• Remount some of the fisheye camera modules which are not centered as i would line them
• Adding/Evolving logic scripts to learn the appropriate brightness for each room at different times, to simulate activity when i am away based on observed usage, to track how long i spend working/sleeping/relaxing
• Auto update the sunrise/sunset times from https://sunrise-sunset.org/api
• Adding image recognition to the camera in the kitchen to read barcodes for shopping lists
• As screens improve i’d like to replace the 8×8 led matrix with a e-ink display. I do not think the tech is where i want it yet. in another 12 months I’ll re-evaluate
• Enabling me to view the Cameras remotely when i’m out to see if i left the oven on etc

The switches are the first of my DsBox projects based on small cheap compute modules working together to provide Home Automation.  Eventually I may build a small AI to run distributed across the boxes. Its name will be “Leo” as a tribute to a tv character I admired.

Assembly and mounting of the switches

Remove sections of the box

Use a jig to hold pins while soldering

Add stickers to how what the bus lines are used for

Assemble the replacement studs

Collect All the bits

Add the replacement knobs to the box

Glue the base plate in place and connect the elements

Using removable velcro strips avoids no drilling holes in the wall

Fit the box base over exisitng light switches ( which are permenantly switched on )

The half of the box with assembly slides on and off the base part that is Velcro to the wall