Light Automation

Objectives:

 

Control lighting in the room using raspberry pi. A set of bulbs must be programmable for task lighting, to mood lighting. If dance-floor effect is possible with the spot-light capability of the bulbs, synthesized light effects are a plus.

 

Must haves:

1. RGBW dimmable LED bulbs
2. Brightness to meet task lighting and mood
3. Swivel control of the bulb socket
4. Programmability of lights and swivel with python

Research so far has dragged up:

1. Bulbs: Philips Hue as the winner for programmable bulbs but LIFX and Belkin follow close on its heels if 16 million colors is not a criterion
• Other options include LIFX, belkin, LG, Samsung, Lumen
2. Robotics solution for swivel: Also called pan and tilt
•  Uses 2 servos, one generic for pan and the other specialized for tilt
3. Track lighting systems for mounting several bulbs
4. Controller board for each pan-tilt assembly which talks to the pi using a wireless technology

Found some interesting videos with low power led projects such as the led cube. Look it up on youtube.

A note on the network technologies:

• Bridge is on the internet using wifi
• Hue and its friends talk to the bridge using Zigbee
• There is no bridge zigbee API available for adding custom devices - walled garden

Other smart bulbs connect to the link/bridge using Bluetooth LE. Bluetooth LE is a PAN technology with a span of a few meters whereas Zigbee is a LAN and covers the entire house.

PiDoorbell: IoT Home Automation workshop @ PyCon 2014

PiDoorbell: Automates sense-and-notify when someone arrives at the doorstep. A picture or video is sent directly to the configured phone as a text message almost instantaneously. This is an Internet of Things project created by Rupa Dachere, Founder and Executive Director of CodeChix.org.

A Raspberry Pi, an echo sensor, a camera, a couple of resistors and wifi connectivity is all you need to build your own PiDoorbell. Well, that and some Python code.

In April 2014, I was a TA and Instructor for a workshop on PiDoorbell at PyCon in Montreal. (A link each to the tutorial video and source code is at the bottom of the page.) The objective of the tutorial was to bring up the hardware kit provided to each participant to successfully sense an object, and click a picture or video.

Over 20 folks were at the workshop and the TAs were on their feet helping everyone. I instructed the class on network setup on Raspbian with different ways of connecting to the network and helped bring up network connectivity via internet sharing from the laptop, via direct ethernet connection and also wifi hot spot access. To tide over the spotty wifi access, I had set up our own access point router fed from intenet sharing from my Mac, which in turn was connected to PyCon's wifi access.

Here is the full team of TAs and Instructors:

PiDoorbell at PyCon 2014 was a huge success! The preparation for this workshop was intense in the weeks preceding the event and it was great fun watching it unfold and consumed eagerly by participants.

Workshop video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i62piPQkUtA
Python source for the project: https://github.com/CodeChix-OpenSource/PiDoorbell
CodeChix post: http://www.codechix.org/2014/05/pycon-2014-pidoorbell-tutorial/
Rupa's blog post: http://rupadachere.blogspot.com/2014/06/recap-of-pycon-and-pidoorbell-tutorial.html
Lyz's blog post: http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=9314