First experiments with the Raspberry Pi and its GPIO outputs
I’ve completed my first experiment in building something physical with my new Raspberry Pi. It’s not overly useful, but I’ve built a binary counter using LEDs. The following video explains more… I originally started writing the code in Python. Mostly because many of the examples for controlling the Raspberry Pi are in Python, but having very little experience in Python …
Found – Apple wants to create iPhone-based automated, connected homes
AppleInsider is reporting that a new, extensive patent application details how a new iPhone model with a near-field communications chip could serve as the connected centerpiece of an automated digitally connected home. Read more here: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/26/apple_wants_to_create_iphone_based_automated_connected_homes.html
FHEM + PHP
In http://www.cpmills.com/2012/02/24/monitoring-temperatures-using-fhem-rrdtool-php-javascript I have attempted to describe how I am graphing my heating system using PHP, FHEM, RRDTool and JavaScript. It seems that FHEM+PHP is a popular search term landing on my website so I wanted to explain in a little more detail how this part of the system works. FHEM provides a really useful method of pulling out all …
Western Digital TV Live – Unboxing and Setup
On Saturday I purchased a Western Digital TV Live from my local Currys/PC World. I wouldn’t normally advocate buying anything from there, but it is currently on offer at £76 making the price very reasonable indeed. Link here if you are interested… I have included a gallery showing the unboxing and initial set-up below. First impressions are that it …
Monitoring temperatures using FHEM, RRDTool, PHP & JavaScript
My Household Temperature Graphs page displays various statistics from my heating system. In this post, I explain how I produce these graphs using a combination of FHEM, PHP and RRDTool. The heating system is based on a number of these Conrad FHT 80 BTFN sets. The programmer controls the actuator via 868Mhz RF and the signal is received by an …
Household Temperature Graphs Updated
I have updated the page showing my household temperature graphs. Previously I was logging data to the cloud using Pachube and while this works well, the tools available for graphing the information are not great. As the number of readings increased, the tools I was using to render the graphs became slower and slower. What’s more the graphs used flash …
DemoPad controlling LightwaveRF
Its the wee small hours and I really should be in bed but I have just installed DemoPad on my iPhone (and iPad) and been playing with trying to get it to control my LightwaveRF installation. It works! What I needed to do was find out the actual IP address of my LightwaveRF WiFi Link (because DemoPad doesn’t currently support …
Cloud Logging
I have been playing with logging this week. FHEM now automatically records the measured temperature, the desired temperature (set point) and actuator levels for each room to Pachube.com (pronounced Patch Bay). With the data held on Pachube, I can do various things like build dynamic graphs for display on this site. At the moment, I am using a Pachube app which …
LightwaveRF WiFi Linked
Finally my local B&Q have taken delivery of the LightwaveRF WiFi Link and I popped in earlier to pick one up. You can order one here through Amazon if you wish: Buy LightwaveRF WiFi Link on-line through Amazon. The packaging is the usual high quality I have come to expect from JSJS Designs and was a bugger to get into …
Moving Blog
So, i’ve decided to self host my blog on my own server. Whether this will turn out to be a sensible choice I will have to wait and see. The primary reason for doing this is to have a bit more flexibility over what I can post and how it will be displayed. Oh, that and the fact that WordPress.com …