Our Home Automation software operates on a dedicated computer and operates 24/7/365 using the Power-Home software package.
Power-Home uses Insteon and shortly Z-Wave technology to communicate with switches, sensors, and controllers throughout our house. Currently Power-Home is managing about 60 Insteon switches, dimmers, sensors, and controllers including the exterior security lights and the heating and air-conditioning system.
Power-Home also provided logic and programming functionality far beyond the 'toy systems' available for the home automation market. We use over 70 individual Macros that are generally triggered by sensor or switch action that have programmed logic to take appropriate action in response to whatever event triggered it.
The Home Automation System also uses a series of battery-powered remote environmental sensing units in various areas of the house that report:
Battery Voltage
Humidity
Temperature
updated every five minutes.
Sensing is done with individual sensing chips mounted on circuit boards and communicating with a XBee Version 3 2.4GHz radio/processing modules using the I2C bus. The various sensor units communicate with a XBee Version 3 radio/processing module functioning as the Coordinator for the XBee network using IEEE 802.15.4 Zigbee protocol. The XBee Coordinator Module is mounted as a Hat on a Raspberry Pi3+ Board which formats the data from each sensor module and transmits the data every five minutes using UDP over our Internet of Things (IoT) network to the Home Automation Computer.
The sensor network will be expanded to include solar/battery-powered outdoor units gathering additional environmental information including levels of infrared-, visible-, and ultraviolet-light, and exterior sound level. Additional sensors will provide soil moisture and vibration levels, both from traffic and geological activity. Terry wants his own seismograph because he doesn't have one.