Jeremie hooked me up with Eric Jennings, Co-Founder of the pinocc.io project. Pinoccio is a wireless hardware development platform targeting “makers” with an arduino style wireless mesh platform. Utilizing IEEE 802.15.4 (which is the basis of Zigbee etc) they aim to create a self managing mesh network, which bridges to IP via a gateway node (using standard wifi). I am yet to geek out a little more with Eric, but I can see myself using pinocc.io as a basis of a lot of my upcoming projects.
I have a LOT of devices in use at my house that would fully benefit with an overhaul to a standardized mesh.
1) Temperature and Humidity monitoring.
Currently I have an AKCP sensorprobe deployment for this. The sensorprobe device exports probe values via SNMP, which I then graph the values over time in Cacti, and alert on threshold events via Nagios. I have a separate disconnected weather monitor with external (outside) temperature+humidity sensor), I use this for outside weather due to the prohibitively expensive weather rated probes for the AKCP. I would like to build a more cost effective, open platform for this. The temp+humidity sensors themselves are fairly inexpensive, and it wouldn’t be too hard to build a weather hardened device. Having a single modular implementation to cover all aspects of temperature/humidity/rainfall would be awesome.
2) Power usage monitoring.
I have a TED5000 deployed for power usage monitoring. The TED5000 uses CT clamps for current usage and a voltage sensor to track line voltage. The TED5000 for whole house isn’t too expensive, but lacks the ability to do individual circuit monitoring easily. I would definitely improve on that.
3) Garage door control
Garage door control is something I tried with some Insteon gear, but it kinda failed. I would love to utilize door state and control remotely. Could easily be extended to become a full security system, including RFID and door strike control.
Those are just 3 of my current ideas for improving on things I already have/use regularly.