Items Tagged With hardware

Submission by Kevin Hawkins - OK - another update. This is of the Rabbit development system with the following piggyback boards installed - a Rabbit 3200 core attached lower left corner, plus the C Bus SIM upper centre (blue board) and a 4 line graphic lcd display with keypad and LED's. The power supply connector is upper right corner and the blue Ethernet cable emerges centre left. The two wires (white and blue) are the C-Bus connection...

If I started talking to you about LCD panels for home automation use, you'd probably start thinking about kit from the sort of suppliers that you're vaguely aware of in the same way you're aware of the outer planets: you know they're there, but you're unlikely to ever have anything to do with them...But if I told you that this was a DIY project, I'd probably put you in mind of some sort of 2-line LCD PIC bodge job, of the sort favored by UKHA's inner sanctum of "How Much?! I'll build it myself!" ubergeeks. And I mean no disrespect here, as I'm one of them.

This project is about neither of the above approaches. You probably won't even have to get a soldering iron out. Some C or C++ coding skills might be of use - at least until there are ready-to-use apps available. What we'll end up with when we've finished is an LCD control panel with the following features...

Submission by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it - For a while I've been looking at how to get Caller ID info into a PC. So many modems appear to offer it but every one I could get my hands on doesn't actually support UK Caller ID. The options seemed to be buy a new analogue modem known to work or buy a dedicated unit (like a Meteor) - Both of which seemed overkill and likely to cost over £70/£80 for a decent modem and well over that for a Meteor. Then Jon Payne posted to the UKHA_D mailing list details of a circuit he'd designed which took the raw output from the CID decoder chip on a BT CID unit and converted it to RS232, ready for a PC...

Submission by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it - "xAP is an open protocol intended to support the integration of telemetry and control devices primarily within the home - it is the glue that supports the interconnectivity of Home Automation devices." - so begins the www.xapautomation .org website...

Recently got emailed a release for this new product. Unfortunately funds and swmbo do not allow me to test but it certainly looks a good alternative to some of the HA focused kit for environmental monitoring especially as you can connect magnetic and single wire sensors. I'll be getting one when circumstances change for sure! Hope to see a report in due course.