wireless sensor home automation w/ Arduino and OpenHAB interface

[EricExperiment]

I've been using Arduino and OpenHAB to start building home automation.  I wrote up a description of my first simple setup here.  I thought other Arduino users might be interested, or could give advice on some of the stumbling blocks.

This setup allows you to make your own wireless Arduino sensors and host the sensor data on your own server at home, which you can access via smart phone.  You can also use it to chart sensor data over time, actuate outputs connected to your Arduino, send emails/notifications when sensor value reaches some defined point.  Very neat.

http://goo.gl/GtxLlN

[veseo]

Hi Eric, really nice project. May I ask you why you have decided for MQTT?

I'm in an open-source project that gives you those results (wireless connection, openHAB interation and Android app) with really few effort, more if in the future you will have more nodes you can get them communicating since runs in a distributed fashion.
Is called Souliss (https://code.google.com/p/souliss/) have you never heard about?

Regards,
Dario.

[EricExperiment]

Hi Dario,
Yes, I've used Souliss before.  It's a great project, and really easy to use for beginners.  I wanted a couple things that Souliss doesn't support at this time - mainly the wireless transceiver I really wanted to use is the RFM69(HW).  It has better range, runs in the 915MHz instead of the crowded 2.4GHz that the popular nRF24L01 uses.

I picked MQTT because it seem like the easiest binding to use for connecting Arduino data to the OpenHAB project.  The MQTT binding is also useful for other things I plan in the future.  Another important feature I wanted to implement is sleep mode on battery powered field nodes.  I wasn't sure if the Souliss was able to run that way.

[veseo]

Hi Eric,

Yes 900 Mhz is better, would you help us develop a driver for the rfm69 in Souliss?

The last release has subscription with sleep support, so you can turn off and on the radio.

If we work in the same direction we can get better result for the opensource community.

Hope you will help us

Dario.

[EricExperiment]

Hi Dario,
I don't have the expertise to modify Souliss sketches for RFM69.  I mostly just fumbled my way through the existing RFM69 library provided by Low Power Labs.  The library itself is pretty easy to use, but I wouldn't know how to being with structuring a network like Souliss does with the nRF24L01.

If someone can make Souliss work with RFM69's, that would be really useful.  700ft range comes in handy.

[veseo]

Is just a matter of including a library, I can do it, but I will need your help to test it out.

If you are interested ping me.

Dario.

[juanpintom]

Hi! I like the idea of RFM69 too =)

700ft range! Awesome!!

Dario, have this on Souliss would be a nice thing

Ty