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Home Automation

RS485 Nodes

Category: RS485 Nodes

Published Date

Written by Timo Sariwating

OLED I'm a huge fan of Arduino and Jeenode. A few of them connected in a network is one of the best ways to distribute sensors, relays, LCDs and so on. But what should I use for networking the nodes? Forgetting about wireless fro now, I have looked at RS232 and Ethernet. RS232 is low cost but in standard form best suited for point to point connections. Ethernet is much better, ethernetcards and libraries are easily available for the Arduino. Cost wise it's not the best solution however.

I decided on RS485. It's being used for DMX and Modbus, used in Industrial and medical environments so it will certainly be enough for my Home Node network.

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Refrigerator Door Sensor

Category: Wireless

Published Date

Written by Timo Sariwating

Kitchen DS10A Today I noticed a bit of water af the bottom of our refrigerator. It's probably because I still need to cut a hole in the sill and put in the plastic vent but it's one of those tasks that's still on the to-do-list. Whilst I was cleaning the refrigerator anyway I shot a few pictures to show the sensor we put on the door. It's a 433.92MHz DS10A Door Sensor with a longer cable attached. Mouting was easy using the supplied double-sided tape.

We mounted it on the inside of the door so you hardly notice it. Has been working fine for over a year now. The DS10A itself is located underneath the kitched cabinet behind the sill.

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KNX IP Interface

Category: KNX/EIB

Published Date

Written by Timo Sariwating

IP 730 When I started out with KNX/EIB the first module I bought was a second hand Busch-Jaeger RS232 interface. Worked perfect with ETS for programming but I was never happy with it in combination with eibd.

And let's face it, using RS232 is getting really old. Even my Arduino has an ethernet card to send OneWire temperatures over the LAN.

Then I found the Weinzierl Enginering IP Interface 730. And it was easily available at a great price on eBay.de. It even has support for IEEE802.3af power over ethernet.

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Arduino OneWire Ethernet

Category: OneWire

Published Date

Written by Timo Sariwating

Arduino Temperature sensors can be found in many forms and sizes. However finding them for KNX/EIB can be quite difficult. And when you do find them they are expensive.

Most of the time buying a RFXCOM is the easiest solution. They work great with Oregon Scientific sensors and it's a wireless solution.

But there are other options. The one I use is OneWire. I had a couple of DS18S20 lying around and they are really small. Already having a couple connected to my central heating and one hidden behind the thermostat I wanted to interface them to my Virtual Gira HomeServer on ESXi.

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Virtual Gira HomeServer on ESXi

Category: KNX/EIB

Published Date

Written by Timo Sariwating

"The Gira HomeServer 3 is the on-board computer for the house. It functions as a gateway for the entire Instabus KNX/EIB installation in a building and is absolutely essential for the networking of modern buildings and their technical equipment internally and with the world." That's what the Gira website says. And for the most part it's true. We use it as our main home automation server. There is a downside however: The price tag and I don't really like the idea of running another server while I have plenty of resources on my VMware ESXi server. (which is free btw).