Computer Controlled Room Automation?

[ZiKi]

Hey i was just thinking this. Could it be possible to control the electronics in my room with a computer? IE. window blinds, lights, music, tv's, fans, etc. How hard will it be to accomplish. I want to build this myself with my own computer and hopefully software. Any ideas, suggestions, links?

I was thinking making a interface that communicates thru usb or parallel that pretty much turns on and off switches. Like it would send a signal to my ac adapter and that would make a light turn on. it could also maybe control the current to make the lights dimmer. etc.

 

[blahblah99]

Not too difficult if you know what's involved and how to do it...

At the very least you will need an interface to a PC, whether it'll be serial port, parallel port, usb, ethernet, etc etc. You will also need an interface to control your lights and switches and buttons.

I think for your application serial communications would suffice, since it's the easiest protocol to implement and use. Your microcontroller should have extra i/o pins that you can toggle to drive external transistors to drive relays/switches.

If you want to be super geeky, build some hardware that uses the wireless pcmcia ethernet cards and have a web server on there so you can go on the web to control your light/switches/tv/etc

 

[DrPizza]

wow, that rings a bell... there's some guy on the internet who has his house wired so that anyone can control his lights (and watch from a webcam).

 

[Geniere]

It's easily done, the software and hardware is available. Do a Google for "home automation".

 

[wacki]

If you want to get down to the nuts and bolts of everything........

I recommend checking out www.basicx.com. Get the BasicX-24 stamp and play around with it. If you have a serial port, anything is possible. BasicX makes it easy to interface with windows or linux. Microsoft... cough cough... yes I said microsoft, actually made a voice recognition version of Visual Basic that is supposed to be pretty good and very easy to use.

Next steps are AVR's, PICS, USB to serial chips etc etc. But don't rush into those. The BasicX is good enough for http://www.sorac.org/ so it should be good enough for you. Plus it's so easy to use!!!

 

[Homerboy]

err.... did I miss someting?
they have all this readibly available already: HERE