Smart Home Computer System

Let's begin this SPARK post with a recap. I began this series with the notion that I would use a simple project, a smart home computer system, to explore a software development tool that was new to me. The first project was simple in the sense that I had a well-defined task: acquire several digital and analog signals and display information to a user. Through that simple task, I c

Shawn Schaffert's ratcheting scheduler Real Time Operating Systems Even though this project is about a smart home dashboard that doesn't necessarily have any time-critical tasks, it very easily could. What if a cloud covered the solar panels, and I wanted to dim the lights in response. I don't want my software to wait for all the temperature sensors to finish updated before changing the lighting. To avoid this potential problem, I want a "Real Time Operating System" for my projec

 One of the most important functions of an embedded system is the ability to connect to a variety of external signals. For my smart home energy efficiency dashboard, the signals come from a variety of sensors and use a range of different protocols. Ideally, I'd like to handle these signals in software by creating a custom driver for each signal, or better yet, by configuring an existing driv

I came across this very elegant residential energy efficiency dashboard from Agilewaves as I was thinking about user interfaces for my smart home project. I like the clean, intuitive design and the logical layout. Skilled interface designers were probably involved with creating this interface. I won't pretend to be a skilled interface designer, and I do want to create a simple user interface that communicates historic resource usage and current usage measurements. There are a lot of tools avai

Whenever I start a new project, I find it helpful to define several key items. These typically involve defining what the customer requirements are, and what tools are available to meet those requirements.The customer for this project is a friend who recently converted a shuttered electronics supply warehouse into an 8000 square foot mixed used building. The first floor office is designed to be Net-Zero office space, making it Rhode Island’s first and only Net-Zero facility. Yes, I do

In my last post, I presented some background on the green building where this project takes place, and I discussed the basic signals that need to be measured for this project. In order to create inputs into my smart home dashboard, I need to measure temperature and humidity both indoors and outdoors, photovoltaic array output, solar thermal usage, and grid-tied energy input. I described how temperature, humidity, and photovoltaic output were going to be measured.Now I’ll discuss how the re