ARDUINO I/O card PLUG-IN

[dominicv]

Good morning All,

I may have covered this subject before, since I am not sure, I will go through it again.

I have looking and reading about these ARDUINO I/O cards, they sound amazing, the potential they have seems to be out of the world, the numerous available sensors for these cards are also overwhelming, from light, temperature, motion, gas, etc.

At this point, I think the combination of the ARDUINO I/O card for " Digital " and " Analog " inputs and the use of either
Z-Wave or Insteon for automation and the integration of HOUSEBOT would make a system worthy of the very expensive ones.

Naturally one needs to create a Plug-In for the ARDUINO card, my questions, as one ever been created from any of the members, if not, does anyone intend to create one, and last, if the answer to the previous two questions are negative, how hard or complicated is it to create a Plug-In.

Dom

[Richard Naninck]

Not sure what the costs are and second if you already have an alarm system, but if you don't own an alarm system yet, please look into the Elk M1 Gold. It does eveything you mentioned in your previous post and communicates all that is going on, on the rs232 port. I own an Elk M1G and interfaced it completely. Superb system for not so many $...

[dominicv]

Hey Richard,

The Arduino ( http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega2560 ) is an open source hardware and software product combination .

Since it is open source the I/O cards are available from the original manufacturerer for about $ 70.00 or on e-bay from Chineese source for about $ 30.00.

The ELK M1 Gold is like the Volvo and the Arduino like a Skoda.

But it still manages to load a lot of stuff on its cards.

Check this site out

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/0 ... _with.html

I think this could make a great little package, which would get new users involved.

Dom

[Timoh]

I've used Arduinos on other projects.
They are very versatile, cheap, loaded with great stuff. $70 is expensive for an Arduino card. There are various flavours with different CPU/memories, but most are in the ~$30CAN range.
However, you need to write an application to run on the Arduino. Just a plugin or script on the Housebot side would not do it.
For example, to grab the status of an input pin #1, you need to write the Arduino program that reads the pin value, transforms it into something meaningful (such as temperature). Then you need to continue writing code to either push it out the USB/serial port and/or service requests from Housebot.
On the Housebot side, you will need to write code to understand what it just received. Ie: temperature from pin1. And also, you might want to write code for HB to pull/request data form the unit.

That's the simple idea. But it come really complex when you have a couple dozen IO pins, and a entire range of sensors that will yield values on the Arduino. For example a light sensor will give a different value than a temperature sensor which will give a different value than a water sensor which will give a different value than ??? Who knows what you will plug into to it?

Tim

[dominicv]

Good evening Tim,

You have done it now, you have really burst my bubble.

As usual I only see the big picture, and never go into details, or at least deep enough.

Tim, I will send you an email shortly.

Dom

[Steve Horn]

Another I/O option, which several of us here use, is the Velleman K8055 USB kit. Nice thing about this is that there is already an HB interface for it. Not as powerful I suspect as what you found, but for basic inexpensive painless I/O this one should be considered. (Velleman also has other boards - more i/o bits, relays, etc.)

[Timoh]

Phidgets is a good option as well.
It comes with drivers that you load up, and can then access the values via vbscript into housebot. However, all the intelligence and any math you need to do, needs to be in either vbscript or Housebot. The Phidgets IO cards are dumb. They just send values.
Tim

[dominicv]

Hi Guys,

I checked the Vellmans card and the Phidgets card, take my word for it I am no expert but I find these cards a little expensive if you compare with Arduino, but I think I know why.

The Arduino card is open source hardware and software, they originated in Italy and are still available from there, but because its open source you can also buy them form Asia at half the price.

If you check on e-bay, you can get their big model which with all kinds of input, for about $ 35.00 to $ 45.00.

I have no clue which is better, but there seems to be a bit more info. available on the Arduino.

There is even an X-10 transceiver available for them, I don't know if this is good or bad mind you.

But like Tim mentioned the other day, there is more to it than just buying the card, there is all kinds of work to be done before proceeding, I guess that applies to any I/O card you buy.

I guess there is no simple way, unless I follow Richard's idea and buy a Creston.

Dom

[Steve Horn]

I wouldn't mind trying an Arduino board someday when I have the time to "bit fiddle". But I'm old and life is short so I tend to take the path of least resistance. BTW, my son sells and installs Crestron; It's no stroll in the park to set up.... or pay for.

[lostdreamer]

Indeed,

I have my share of Crestron as well, worked for 3 years at an engineering firm installing this stuff. It's not easy (having to program it with binary logic) and prices are very, VERY high (if you would want to go down this road I still have second hand Crestron Processors and other hardware here I still want to sell).

If it is just easy integration you want: I second the K8055 / VM110 from Velleman for this kind of stuff, still pretty cheap, and very easy to integrate.


LostDreamer

[Timoh]

The interesting thing about the Arduino, is you can make it as simple or as complicated as you want for a HB interface.

ie: You can just replicate the IO pins into Housebot and do all the math/logic with HB or vbscript. In other words, just give a value of an inputto HB with a number that doesn't mean anything. Doing it that way would be easy, and if someone felt inspired, is probably couple of days worth of work programming the Arduino. ( I still have one laying around from a previous project, so you never know.

However, if you wanted to make the Arduino "smart", and for example, have it "know" a temp sensor was on pin 1, and return an actual temperature, instead of a value, then that would take a little longer and is more complex.

Tim

[dominicv]

Good morning Steve, Lost Dreamer, Tim,

Steve, I can sympathize, I am in the same boat, I just retired, I still have a trike to complete, I have been on it for about 4 years already only working on weekend on that project.

Home Automation, I like the bells and whistles like everybody else, but I do not have the expertize and patience to go in depth.

Lost Dreamer, Tim,

I wasn't aware of how complicated these cards could be, I took it for granted that it was like a walk in the park, I guess my park is like a 300 mile walk.

Live and learn, but best keep dreaming if nothing else.

Dom

[Richard Naninck]

I would go for intelligence in HB scripting vs programming the arduino card. The ELK M1 can be made very smart as well by setting rules in the ELK itself and an Ocelot can be programmed as well like many other devices. But if you use the hardware just as an interface to sensors and do the math using HB, it would be as capable and saves lots of time while keeping a better oversight.
I never actually looked at Crestron devices and I am surprised that it is hard to set up. The EIB stuff I am working on is also very hard to se up and almost requires a complete study.
I always figured that time is on your hand when you retire but now it appears that time is running out and you have to make choices in priority

[Timoh]

Yep Totally agree all control/programming should be done in HB.
I learned my lesson with that on the Ocelot. 2 sets of code to maintain... HB & Ocelot. I used to put mission-critical functions in Ocelot for reliability and not in HB. But now my HB setup is sooo stable, I have no mission-critical functions, or any code in the Ocelot. I just use it as IO.
ts

[dominicv]

Hey Guys,

Richard it makes sense what you're saying about HB doing the math. but how complex are we talking about, you are most likely writting script?

Tim, in reading your message, with the high reliability rate you have, I assume use another protocol than X-10 ?

Dom