Dashboard once again

It's been more than a year since I last published about the dashboard. And that it because not much happened in that front.

Meanwhile, a friend gave me a tablet, cheap chinese thing, which I planned to use to display the dashboard in a visible place in the house.
The thing could even display the HTML5 and handle the AJAX calls and all, but it was unstable, sleep mode would spend the battery almost as fast as normal mode, slow to boot, bad touchscreen (resistive), and so on, and so on, so I quit on it, and consequently on the progress on the dashboard, as the experience while using it is, in my opinion, of great importance!

A few months later, my wife offered me an iPad, the new retina display model! so that rekindled my interest in the dashboard. I came back to iWeb, expanded the design a bit, and have spend a couple of evenings implementing the functionality...this is the result:

And for the explanation:

electricity and gas consumption: the pointers move, as the data is updated, and shake slightly when stable, to indicate that the thing is alive. The numbers are updated twice a minute.

House control: this interfaces mainly with the FHZ1000 part of the automation. It reads set, measure and desired temperatures, displays the measured, and makes the box green if the room is set for comfort temperature (even if it has not yet been reached) and blue for low temperature. The boxes turn orange is there is no reply.
The buttons for the awnings are toggle buttons: click to extend them and click to retract them, since the system has no idea of what their status is (they can be operated locally). They briefly blink through orange to give feedback that something happened!
climate limited: is a button to limit the maximum temperature to which any room can be set
holiday mode: should set all rooms to a low temperature and out of the standard program. this is the only button not yet functional (and therefore transparent).

Door events: list of the last 4 events on the RFID door.

System messages: reports errors on the system, like now, the weather station has stopped transmitting.

Agendas: list a few items (enough to fill the respective boxes) taken from google calendar. I have a google calendar for the house, where I put the garbage schedule, and other maintenance activities that need to take place.

Outside temperature: like the name says, displays the data from the weather station. Now it displays nothing, since the station stopped working - see system messages :)

And that is it! data is updated on timers, and the agendas on loading of the page.

There has been talk in the tubes about some mechanisms to update data in real-time. That should be the next development, but that might take another few years :) This is nice enough to show to my friends :)

AH! last but not the least, I found out that one can include some lines in an HTML page to make it a iPad app, so, by adding:

    <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" />
    <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black-translucent" />

I can save the page onto the iPad desktop (is it what it is called?) and run it as any other app, without the safari address bar. Only the top bar with the clock and stuff is still visible, but that is even a plus, as it gives you a clock and iPad info!

I'll try to post a screenshot from the iPad soon!

RFID lock: ready! finally...

After years and years of thinking, googling and trying things out, I finally managed to finish my RFID lock!

So here is what it is: I have a door from the outside to the garden, which I use to get the bikes in the garden. There is a small slope leading to said door. I find it pretty annoying to have to go down the slope, get the keys out of the pocket, unlock the door, get in with the bike, put the bike in the shed, get the keys out again, lock the door. Especially in the rain, and in the winter, when all this implies the further step of taking the gloves out, and finding the lock hole in the dark.

For a long time I did not lock the door. I simply left it unlocked, but that always felt like a big security risk, so I started locking it. But in the back of my mind there was always the will to get it automatic. At work I have a badge which I use to get all the doors open until I reach the bike shed, and this is pretty easy to get out of the jacket pocket, even with the gloves on, so why shouldn't it be also easy to do at home.

So here is the final solution:

- a JeeNode, for wireless connectivity;
- a RFID reader module for Mifare cards, from Stronglink, an SL30
- an Abloy EL561 electronic lock (this is the expensive part of the project)

The RFID module is pretty nice, it uses I2C for communication, and can be put into sleep mode. Stronglink has a pretty good service too! quickest delivery - modules arrived in 3 days from Beijing - and when I had a problem with the power saving mode, they couldn't help me, but sent a whole new set of modules to replace mine, in case it was a hardware problem. The sleep mode problem is still there, as it doesn't quite work as expected, but I managed to get it to work in a procedure that is close to voodoo :) change something in the code and it mysteriously stops working. I wrapped it in FIMO to make a module to have on the outside, since the range on the sensor is not very big - about 4cm.

Then the Jeenode. It controls the whole thing, and when the card number is an authorised one, it closes a SSR relay, which provides 12V to the lock, thereby enabling it to be opened just by using the door handle. It also sends a radio message to the server informing which card was used. It does not yet using central authorisation, as I will need to get encryption going on for that. The Jeenode sleeps for most of the time, but wakes up every 500ms to check for a card, it then wakes up the SL30 module, checks for a card, puts the module back to sleep and sleeps again. It is now powered by 4.5V, so lets see how long before the batteries need replacement. I am hoping they will last a few months, but I will be glad if they last 1 month...

And the lock, is a pretty nice lock, which locks automatically, so the door is always locked now.it also provides a lot of signals, like cylinder used, handle down, door open, and a few more I think, but I do not yet make use of them. I want to, but that will be the next hardware iteration.

There are a lot more details, but those are for next time.

here are a few photos:

The electronics box, with the Jeenode, 12V battery for the lock, 3xAA for the controller, and the cables coming in, one from the lock, and one from the sensor outside the door.


The sensor on the outside.