Friday, 27 June 2014

First Adventure with Z-Wave Home Automation

As we're (hoping to) soon be moving house, I wanted to look into home automation, starting with a set of Philips Hue lightbulbs on my wishlist, but reading led to yet more reading and I've ended up with the beginnings of a Z-Wave network.

I've purchased an Aeon Labs USB stick to stick in the side of my old unused netbook, and am dabbling with python-openzwave.  My first task was just to get the sensors (Aeon labs MultiSensor) recognised, and then start building some logic to monitor the temperature and turn on a fan if it rises above a threshold.
 
I've put some code up on github called flask-openzwave which I hope to grow as I learn more about Open ZWave.

Maybe foolishly, I decided this would be more fun than just buying a box (essentially another linux computer) pre-build with pre-made software.  The only thing I'll miss is a nice Android app, but this can be mitigated by some keyfobs and a REST-like web interface.  My wife will love it (maybe)...