The transpositions of
Daniel Robert Chote

Project - Home Automation

I am currently in the process of getting fairly complete automation of our house here in PA. Using Indigo 2.x as a base, pulling in various other technologies using applescript and a bit of know-how. Full control for lighting, window shades, heating/cooling and access control is planned. I have uploaded various screenshots and photos for this project here.

The technologies I have in use are:

  • Insteon
  • Dakota
  • AKCP Sensorprobe 8
  • Axis networked cameras
  • Security Spy
  • Nagios
  • Cacti
  • Asterisk

What I have

The central "brain" of the system is running on a Powermac Quad G5 (total overkill, but i had one spare). The software wrapping everything together is Indigo 2.5 beta, with a bunch of applescripts contributed by Indigo users, and a few written by myself.

Lighting control is handled by Indigo using Insteon tech. Insteon is like X10, but its actually reliable. X10, is not... All of the lighting in the house is switched by Insteon enabled switches, with a mix of dimmers and relays. The Insteon network is bridged to the powermac via a usb controller that Indigo controls.

Environmental monitoring is handled by the AKCP Sensorprobe 8, this is a network enabled device that exports probe information via SNMP. I have Nagios+Cacti both polling for historical data, and high temperature alerts. I have an applescript that is in charge of pulling the SNMP probe data in to Indigo, this is currently informational, but will be used for controlling the house heating/cooling and bathroom fans for humidity control.

I am using Dakota devices for motion sensing. Its a very light wireless protocol, that I am using with an Insteon enabled receiver. Dakota events are handled in Indigo.

Security Spy is used to pull in the Axis networked cameras. I have basic motion detection and recording setup.

Asterisk is in use for the house phones. I have various SIP based ip phones throughout the house. PTSN handoff is managed by an IAX trunk to my company Asterisk implementation, which is terminating a PRI line. I am currently working on an IVR system to link in to my home automation. This will give me control over basic house lighting commands (via an XML protocol to Indigo) and other systems that are deployed.

The Files

Here are the applescripts I have hacked together to pull in some extra functionality.

SensorProbe8 SNMP poll
This script uses the commandline snmpget utility to poll the array of OIDs and insert the results in to Indigo as the corresponding variable names.

Download sensorprobe.scpt

Network Growl Notify
I couldnt get the growl network forwarding to work (never have been able to for some reason). So I decided to use the commandline growlnotify utility instead. growlnotify can be found in the Growl Extras section of the Growl install image.
One of the things that was missing from the original growl script was insteon events. I added a few functions to convert the insteon integer to Indigo capable hex. This enables "Named" events to be sent to the target machine.

Download growlnotify.scpt

Future stuff

I plan to integrate with the heating/cooling systems of the house in the new year. We are looking at getting a heatpump system installed to complement our oil based furnace.

RFID proximity tech is on the horizon too, I see some really cool uses and automation that can be accomplished with it.

External Links

Here are links to all the technologies in use: