We're in the golden age of DIY home automation. Wifi-enabled microcontrollers like the particle photon are a game changer; it's never been easier to make a connected device yourself.
Using the Photon I've built a device that connects to my doorbell and sends a push notification to my mobile when someone rings. (Might be useful when you're in the back yard and don't want to miss the delivery guy)
Yes, most of the stuff is still gimmicky. But when you're tinkering, it's not necessary to turn everything into a product that will change the world or earn a billion dollars. We can just have a bit of fun, and enjoy the things we can do.
I think that hackerspaces might be todays equivalent to the homebrew computer clubs where enthusiasts dabbled with early home computers...
I agree and disagree with you at the same time. IoT, especially with things like the Photon and ESP8266 are major game changers. However, the idea of a baked-in WiFi stack with little/no way to update protocol bugs is rather scary proposition. And I'm also against giving IoT devices a directly routable IP address, even if they are behind a NAT.
I'm looking more at things like the nRF24L01+ board combined with MySensors, which seems to be rather mature. It is a self-healing mesh network with encryption and signing support. And I can get all the data from the net mesh with a serial gateway (inputs/outputs via USB serial). I can connect that gateway to a Linux machine running Node-red and use the MySensors encoder/decoder.
Hook up a relay and you can toggle electronics on and off, or you can make a manual high voltage switch using a servo and 4 contact switches. I'm also using PIR for occupancy along with temp sensors for zone acquisition. I'm looking at developing my own thermostat as well to see if I have the chops..
Using the Photon I've built a device that connects to my doorbell and sends a push notification to my mobile when someone rings. (Might be useful when you're in the back yard and don't want to miss the delivery guy)
Yes, most of the stuff is still gimmicky. But when you're tinkering, it's not necessary to turn everything into a product that will change the world or earn a billion dollars. We can just have a bit of fun, and enjoy the things we can do.
I think that hackerspaces might be todays equivalent to the homebrew computer clubs where enthusiasts dabbled with early home computers...