• Category Archives Computers

  • Imagine a life with no computers……ahhhh……bliss…..

  • IoT

    Posted on by beno 3 Comments

    IoT = Internet of Things.
    Its whats been consuming my life of late.
    Ever since Google bought the company that made the Nest thermostat for a few billion smackers, its been exploding all over the press and leaking out of tech companies at an astonishing rate.
    (In fact, its been around longer than that, much much longer, but for a clear start to the story, this will do).

    Thats nice Ben, what in the world are you talking about?
    Yeah, see, there, right there is the core issue….
    What exactly is the Internet of Things?

    We all are pretty comfortable with the Internet. For most of us, its about web pages and email.
    Facebook and gmail ‘run’ over the Internet, Instagram photos are ‘on’ the Internet.
    Connected computers, I think we are all pretty comfortable with that.

    A few geeks and nerds know that the Internet is a series of pipes. Pipes that can carry lots of different services, or messages.
    Take for example your banking. You interface it via a web page, but your bank shuffles around money using those pipes, and they don’t use web pages, they send data and the Internet carries it. Happily.

    You all know that I work in automation. I can (and do) use the Internet pipes to carry, say, temperature data from one point to another. Room temperatures, computer temperatures, water temperatures etc. It matters not what the data is, just that it is structured in a way that I can stick it in one end of a pipe and pull it out in a recognisable form from the other end.

    Here then is where we get close to IoT.
    We have the Internet and we have things.
    Things can be anything that uses the right data format. Thats all that matters. The data format. What the thing is matters not.

    So, thus we end up with companies like Nest. They made a thermostat for your home heating/AC. You pull your perfectly good thermostat off the wall and install theirs (for around 250 bucks). It joins your home Wifi network, and thus hops into the first pipe of its Internet joyride.
    Suddenly your home room temperature can pop up all over the place, your phone, your iPad, your computer, lots of places.
    You have a thing, your room temperature, on the Internet.

    Do we even want to imagine an Internet of Things?

    Who really cares about a room temperature on an Android smartphone?
    What’s any of this got to do with you?

    Yeah. That and more……


    Computers

  • Its raining.

    Posted on by beno Comment

    A few months back Opto brought a weather station.
    Happily I got to install it.

    IMG_20131029_075641

    Its a nice Davis Pro Vanguard 2. Pretty sweet.
    There already was a pole with an old FM radio antenna on it, since no one uses that, I pulled it down and reused the pole to put the station on.

    IMG_20131029_090806

    (Clearly I did not take that photo in the rain).

    To finish off the install, we pointed the data logging function of the station to a weather site where we can upload our data.

    http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KCATEMEC23

    All that then, to say, check out the data.

    Its raining. And not just raining, but its pelting down.
    They say we may get a years worth of rain today added to tomorrows forecast.
    Not good. Yes, we need it, but not in 36 hours thanks.

    Sad thing is. People still have their sprinklers running……
    We get so little rain here that most systems do not have the extra ‘rain sensor’ installed, and if it is, its mostly broke (as was our original systems).
    On top of that, if the steady stream of renters that have been in and out of our street and needed help with their sprinkler systems are anything to go by, most people do not know how to use the controllers, which, I want to strongly point out, is not the peoples fault, but rather that of the designer of the controller.

    Case in point is the washing machine video from the other day.
    These systems can be made a LOT easier to use. Dont get me wrong, I’m not saying that every sprinkler system needs a smartphone app, I’m just saying that like the washing machine, the front panel controls can be GREATLY simplified and reduced.

    Here is my attempt at making it simple for Freddy and myself;
    (Note, this is the PC web browser version, I have a similar version for iPad and smartphones so we can easily control it while away (or sitting in the lounge)).

    groov sprinklers

    This is the version we have running at the moment, we will be re-hashing the layout in the next version.
    If you have any thoughts about how to make it even simpler, I’m all ears.
    (Note, in summer, all the zones are not (and cannot be) the same time, so thats not an option to condense them all into one or two durations).

    The next version will have a software hook into the national weather service to automatically turn the sprinklers off the day before if more than 40% chance of rain in the next day.
    The zones will also automatically adjust their times based on the watering index which is calculated from the previous days top temperature, humidity and wind speed.

    Anyway, back to the rain……..

    rain on friday feb 2014

    From the forcast, it should be like this most of the day and into the night, shower after shower sweeping across.
    (Temecula is the red marker).

    Its raining, but I can’t for the life of me find a corry iron roof to stand under and listen to it……..


    Computers Life in the USA

  • Garage door – Part 2

    Posted on by beno 2 Comments

    Just to be clear. I don’t have ADD, I just like to keep moving forward…..

    While waiting for inspiration on the dog door dilemma (One of the guys at work has a great idea and I am tinkering around with testing it) I turned my short attention span to the detecting the Smart Car in the garage problem.

    Just as with the dog door, we thought about microswitches in this case as well, but having them attached to something seemed a bit old fashion.
    The fact that the Smart is red did not escape my attention either, you can buy color detecting sensors these days pretty cheap. So I could detect the red door and know the car is there.
    Video camera object detection was also considered (and was/is more than a passing thought for the dog doors as well).
    Lasers are always fun (Got a blog in mind for that topic as well), so thought about that option.
    Ultrasonic range detection. Terry was in the robotics club at high school and they used one on their bot, so we are looking for an excuse reason to use one of them around the house….

    In the end, we settled for a loop of wire on the ground. Just like they have for traffic lights. Have always wanted to play with that sort of thing, so it was a good excuse for me to tick it off my list.

    There are lots of circuit diagrams for making one out of bits on the web, and I thought about going that way, I really miss playing with electronics, but in the end, a lack of time won over.
    So, we brought a unit off eBay.

    First up, they don’t come with a coil, so I went to the local electronic shop (can you believe that there is one, just one in Temecula, and its within walking distance of Opto?) and got a spool of wire.

    The wire has to be made into a loop that will sit on the floor under the Smart Car, so I wound it around the rubbish (trash) bin (can). As you do.

    IMG_20140216_123324

    It was pretty much the perfect size, and being a cone, meant that the coil just slipped off. (Freddy freaked out when she saw me wrapping wire around the thing. Really? We have been married for some 24.3 years and she still worries when I start wrapping stuff with wire??)

    Added some tape to keep it together. (Look at me go BA and keep it all neat).

    IMG_20140216_124856

    The unit itself is very straight forward, you add power, connect the coil and it has a switch (relay) output. 50 bucks. Hate to say it, but why muck about with soldering and chips and stuff when you can just buy the box and get on with life?

    IMG_20140216_134522

    Here it is on the floor, ready and waiting……

    IMG_20140216_140450

    Relax Sue, I am going to throw a nice rug over it and hide it, but wanted the geeks to see it first…..
    There is some coax cable going from the coil to the box, you need to shield the signal so it does not pick up any stray interference.
    I wish there was a join the floor to put the cable in, but there aint, so I will probably get a little rubber to put either side of it so the cable does not get squashed under the terrific weight of the Smart Cars front wheel.

    I hooked the switch into the Opto controller and we are done.
    The system now knows when the car is in the garage and so it knows when its time to shut the garage door.

    Now, I need to interface the Opto controller with the garage door itself… Wonder what I will get distracted with while I get that set… oooo shiny….


    Computers Opto22

  • Garage door – Part 1.

    Posted on by beno 2 Comments

    Its been a busy few weeks. Have been messing with some software that links stuff together.
    This blog is not about that software. Or the stuff. Or the links.

    Slightly geeky content ahead. (Hey, I said slightly, give it a try, you might make it all the way though).

    I want to automate my garage door. Cause, you know, pressing the garage door opener button in the Smart Car is soooooo 1990’s…..

    But. There is a problem. Malcolm.
    The little fleabag happy little puppy loves to ‘escape’ out the open garage door if he is around when I come home.
    About the last thing I feel like doing when I get home from work is chasing the little barkerbrains character filled dog all over the neighbourhood (the whole coming when hes called thing? Yeah, not so much).

    This is not a problem. Its a challange.
    One that I have accepted. Perhaps a little too enthusiastically, but accepted none the less.
    Begin with the end in mind, that what my old boss Ray used to tell me when I was programming Opto at the hospital…. So here is the end goal.

    Something (we will get to what in a future blog) will detect that I am close, very close, to home and shut the dog out of the garage, then open the garage door, then detect the car is in the garage, then shut the garage door. When the garage door is fully shut, then let the dog out.
    (See how much better that is than me texting Freddy that I am on my way home, having her trap the dog, then me pressing a button to open the door when I get into the driveway, then pressing it again to shut the door once I am parked in the garage, then Freddy releasing the hound once she hears the door fully shut?)

    So, lets get started.
    First up, we have to know where the dog is…..

    IMG_20140219_065319300_HDR

    I have put micro switches on both sides of the dog flap.
    Here is a shot of the flap open (as if the douche bag dog is going through.

    There is a switch on each side of the flap so I can tell if hes going in or out, this way, I can track where he is, what direction he’s going etc. (It will be fun to write some extra software to detect the speed that he goes between the two doors at some future time).

    IMG_20140219_065340529_HDR

    You can see that in theory it should all work rather well……
    Yeah, well, take a look at this mornings results;

    dog doors from groov

    This is a screenshot of what needs to be another blog entry, but for now, its enough to know that work gave me our graphic artist to spruce up my home automation graphics so we could use it to demo our new web product…..

    Don’t get distracted.

    Look closely at the data presented….. First up, the dog was not in the garage with me, it was upstairs cuddling with Freddy in bed. (Dont get me started).
    Note the counts on each door….. Is the dog able to teleport through the door without triggering the switch? I wish. (Cause then, it would be a cool dog).
    Yes, I know, switches can ‘bounce’, that is to say, you can get more than one signal per actuation. I have accounted for that in the software… No, I think its simply a case of the switches are just not placed exactly right or are sticking or something.

    Bottom line is this, I don’t know (accurately) where the dog is at any given time, so I wont be opening the garage door automatically any time soon.

    Until I solve this problem, we are stuck at part one.


    Computers Opto22