Taking the Pi further

A world of home automation awaits.

Home automation covers an extensive range of products, services and new concepts. If you’ve been bitten by the IoT bug and wish to expand your knowledge and dive into a home automation set up then here are a few areas for further research.

Nest

Purchased by Google in early 2014 for $3.2billion, Nest is a big player in home automation. Its range of products started with a central heating control system that linked to mobile devices. Now its range covers smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and an IP camera. The main issue with these devices are their rather high cost, eg a simple smoke/carbon dioxide detector retails for £89. What you pay this high price for is convenience and all of the hacking has been done for you packaged in a sleek device.

X10

This is a protocol for electronic devices that primarily use powerlines to send control and signalling. X10 has been around since 1975 and while it may not be the latest protocol it does have a large user base, thanks largely to a low cost of components. X10 also enjoys support for a range of boards, including the Arduino and Pi, which enables it be used to control appliances in your home in different ways.

Wireless Things Open Pi

The Open Pi project uses the lesser-known member of the Pi family, Compute. This is model is a smaller SODIMM package that’s ready for embedding in a project and Open Pi places this, already slim module into a small plastic case. The Open Pi is designed to enable hackers to use it for various IoT projects, using a mix of Bluetooth Low Energy, an infra red receiver and an SRF shield, which offers long distance radio communications to devices equipped with an SRF.

Devices that are available include: an Arduino-compatible board called Xino RF; an SRF GPIO add-on for the Pi and a USB stick for computers. The SRF and its higher-powered version ARF can transmit over distances far greater than standard wireless IoT devices.