Last updated December 2011
It will come as no surprise that there is to be a significant amount of home automation. Why? Well partly as an energy saving measure - lights that can be individually controlled, a heating system that is as predictive as possible with solar input, smart entertainment- and partly just to make life interesting!
The overview of the system is below. (You'll probably want to double click it to see it all).
Not shown in full is the telephony(Asterisk) and CCTV(Zoneminder) integration which is a phase 2 activity.
More detail is to come but some (many!) of the items in the diagram are not off the shelf. One of the main ones is the lightswitches which will be throughout the house. These will be either 4 or 8 switches and with or without an LCD display. The specification is here.
The main protocol which drives the system is xAP (Website). xPL was also used for entertainment but is now no longer used. xAP was chosen as it was designed to allow autonomous operation - one device can either target another or a device can listen for other devices it is interested in. There doesn't have to be a main PC though there is and this has caused almost no real problems in 2.5 years of operation - the system is also very responsive with no perceptible delay between operations.
It seems crazy to create any new dimming hardware when there is a perfectly good, cheap (compared to Lutron, et al.), worldwide, proven in harsh conditions...you get the idea, system - DMX. What is required is a way of integrating DMX with the remaining HA system. This is via an xAP to DMX bridge. This particular bridge makes use of the Milford Instruments serial-DMX converter. Initially work started (and was about 90% complete) on a homebrew USB version but the Milford unit has the advantage of 8 inputs which can trigger scenes and operate autonomously. Therefore as long as this unit and the DMX dimmers have power it is possible to have a manual 'backup' system. In Honey Cottage there will be a 9 way switch panel under the stairs which will input to the DMX converter as backup - though this has never been needed! The HA system is responsible for loading each of the 8 scenes.
The dimmers themselves are NJD Electronics - 3 DPX12/4 giving 36 channels of lighting. Almost all of the lighting is 'home run' back to Node 1 located in part of the roof void at first floor level where there are two DPX12/4 and the rest to node 3 where there is a single DPX12/4.
In addition, a 16 channel NJD DMX to 10V converter is being used to control two motorised proportional valves (see Heating).
RGB lighting is used in a number of areas - more are likely to be added. Initially 12 channels (4 x 3 RGB) will be available. Each provides 350mA constant current PWM dimming. The interface is one per unit. More details.
A further three external 'in ground' uplighters are in use on the patio outside that use LU3 MR16 LED lights. These are controlled by a DMX for all 4 channel driver.
An LCD display, for the xAP Protocol, has been
created using an off the shelf Ethernet board.
Alarm
The alarm system is integrated with the home automation and uses the GE Caddx Networx NX-8E. This is linked to the HA via an xAP<>Caddx conduit.
The main part of the heating is the use of the Arduino xAP interface BSC TEMP based on the Nanode. At regular intervals it reports the values of each of the attached Dallas DS18S20 sensor, which are in the main rooms on the end of Cat5e structured cabling.
A small PI script is implemented for most rooms and this controls the valves to
the radiators. In addition, a demand signal is generated to the Alpha PLC in the
boiler house.
Node 0
To follow...
Node 1
Node 1 is located on the first floor in a roof void and contains most of the DMX lighting dimmer packs, 16 toroidal transformers and a Dell Rio for the Ensuite audio. It also has 8 relays for some lighting plus electric UFH and heated mirror (Ensuite).
Node 2
Node 2 is located in the boiler room in the 'shed'. This contains the Mitsubishi Alpha controller which is the main unit for the heating control. The Solar controller is independent and handles the solar pump. It uses 3 x DS18S20 sensors.
Node 3
As the build has progressed, it has become obvious that a fourth node is required, adjacent to the radiator manifolds. In addition to the heating control some of the home run lighting terminates here as there is not sufficient space to bring all the cables back to Node 1 across the landing floor. The Node 1 box is now located in node 3. Installed it's not quite so tidy!
Node 3 contains the manifolds for the wet radiator heating. Each of which is individually controllable.
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These are the Danfoss manifolds with 24V thermal actuators. |
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And the rest of them. All are controlled through relays from xAP Netiom's. |
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This shows the proportional valves which mix the incoming with the
return, with a sensor on each return leg. These are controlled by a
0-10v output from a DMX unit. In the background is the distribution board for Node 3, fed by SWA, and the DPX12/4 dimmer pack and some of the toriodal 12V transformers. |
Here's also a copy of my 23K256 SRAM test code for the Nanode (AVR Atmega328) using SPI. I found that much of the code on the net was either plain wrong or didn't produce a result which actually verified it was working. And, unless you deselect the Ethernet chip the SPI reads are corrupted.
git@github.com:g8kmh/Useful-Stuff-Arduino.git