Another big project, which I am running since 1992 is automate my home. The idea came, when I was a child and my mother had to break a phone call, while a pan runs over. In this case I thought: "It would be nice to switch off the electricity of the cooker in the kitchen, when the phone call needs more time". and this with a device near the phone.

During my studies I began to make the first steps. Later two of my friends also joint the project, but not for a long time. This because the work load was to much. So my first hardware was realized in 1992 and will be continuously improved.

The following pictures shows some of the works done for the project. Today two rooms are fully network with light, sound and blinds. In every room there is a light, which is conventional wired in case of a network failure. But in the last 4 years I had no such failure!

Left is the light controller which can dimm three lamps. On the right you can see the network connection. The network is based on RS-485 signals with a proprietary protocol.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Here sown is one of the MMI-units. Each room has its own unit, which allows the control of light and blind.

With a smart controller, the network is also connected to the PC. The following pictures shows the PC-Software. The software is based on Visual Basic 2.0 as a project to learn the handling of Visual Basic.

Start-up picture of the program.

Main window, from here every room can be controlled.

Specific window for controlling the light in one room.

The program has another features which are not shown here. All buttons are free programmable with network command from a list or with macros. Macros can be recorded in the program or edited in a list. Also available are timers which can start commands or macros. for debugging the network, there are two analyzers integrated. One shows the number of packets transferred over the network and the current capacity of the network. With the other tool I can visualize the all or specific packets run through the network or send any self edited packet.

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Copyright (c) 1999 - 2010 Thomas Hoeltschi
Last modified: 11-Jun-2010