This site started in 2012-04-11 to describe how I’m making my Home Automation / Smart Home, I live in Brazil but this site is written in english to make the information available to anyone interested in this subject.
Many links about things used here are in my other web site http://dicas.ivanfm.com written in Portuguese, but you can translate to other languages using google Translator link which is available in the bottom right of pages.
The prices for buying home automation system in Brazil are abusive, and I started to build step by step using tecnologies that can be integrated.
The main points in my Home Automation are :
- The house should work as an normal house
- The insteon devices directly control local lamps
- The remote controlled devices also have local button to turn on/off
- Integration
- Only get hardware / software which permit integration with others, preferably using standard protocols
- Don’t be locked with a single vendor when possible
- Software
- Hardware
- Known Problems
- nRF24L01 / nRF24L01+ communication is not encrypted
- But all Arduino boards used have XBee conector
- In future other radios can be used to provide encryption without many changes.
- nRF24L01 / nRF24L01+ communication is not encrypted