2013-04-27

RF-Bitbanger

I have been working a bit with T Andersson, who has written rf-bitbanger. Rf-bitbanger is a device driver for Raspberry Pi that allows writing of pulse sequences to the GPIO-pins. This makes it possible to connect for example a 9€ 433MHz transmitter directly to the RPi and control remote switches without any additional interface components (see picture above).
I have now made a first version of a rf-bitbanger-HomeItem which can transmit all protocols supported by NetHome via a rf-bitbanger port. This means that for only 9€ you can turn RPi into a complete home control system!

2013-04-07

Plan view

So I have finally finished the plan-view page on NetHomeServer. It has been half done for a long time, but the editing part has been missing. But now this is also there! The idea is that you can load any background image that represents your home (I used the excellent SweetHome3d to create mine), and then you can add and drag and drop your Home Items on the image.

When you click an Item, you get a popup with all available actions for that Item, as is shown in the example below:

The main attribute of the Items is presented below the icon, for example temperature if it is a thermometer. The values are constantly updated on the page, so it always shows the current status.

It is also possible to add multiple plan views (they are Home Items of course), and when you add another Plan Item to a plan, it becomes a link to that plan. The green arrow in the top center of the image above is such a link and when it is selected you are directed to that Plan Item, as is shown below:
In this way you can for example zoom in on an area with many lamps or controls or have multiple plans for different floors, rooms or buildings.

The plan view is now available in the nightly build and will be part of next release.

2013-04-01

ZhejiangLamp

Added support for a new remote switch. In Sweden it is sold by Kjell & Company, but it is probably OEM:ed by many others. The manufacturer is Zhejiang Fuhaote Electronic, so I called the corresponding lamp Item "ZhejiangLamp". It uses the same chipset as most low end remote controls, but with quite short pulse times so it pushes the limit a bit for the audio signal based driver.
It is now available in the nightly build.