My Tech

Well it's been a while so I thought I'd better post an update.

Automated Lights

The lights are now a "production" element of my apartment. They're essential, reliable and... they're awesome.

In order to consider them a "production element", I had a couple of things to implement.

Hardware

Firstly, my solution was in two pieces. I had the Raspberry Pi and then I had my soldered light module.

Not a tidy solution.

So, for inspiration I put Ironman 1 and 2 on (Ironman 3 is playing as I type this) and re-soldered the lighting module inside the Raspberry Pi case.

Two pieces become one (pretty sure the Spice Girls sang a song about this story).

Software

Now that the hardware is in a nice tidy case and tucked away in the corner of my office, scheduling was my next focus.

I've always had buttons to delay a light by a number of seconds. 

But what I really wanted was to be able to say "Every Saturday turn these lights on at this time and then turn them off at this time". Or go on holiday and be able to have the lights come on at certain times.

So I've written a scheduling module:

I can now set recurring schedules of lights or one off schedules. 

A great example of this is my Christmas Tree. Usually at this time of year, I'm performing an ungraceful crawl under the tree to turn the lights on and off. But no more!

Now, the lighting system (I really need to name it - feel free to comment with suggestions) turns the lights on at 6:30am Monday to Friday, switching off at 8am (I'm long gone on my way to work before this time but I want them to be on until I've left the apartment). They then return to full flare at 6pm, turning off at 11:30pm.

The schedule is currently checked at 00:01 every morning. A future enhancement will have it check more frequently, but daily is enough at the moment.

Raspberry Pi update

The excitement of Christmas brings a second Raspberry Pi for me. This Pi, nicknamed Robotics, will be my first experiment into the world of motors. My current aim is to be able to control a motor using linux. Once I can do that, I'll let my imagination run away with me.

Imagine automated blinds, a robot arm, an automated Degu feeder. Pipe dreams but cool.

The motor is en route so expect an update in a future post.

New Tech

NAS

In non-Pi related news, I was given a NAS for Christmas. My iMac is currently copying everything from my external hard drive over to the NAS.

It's all part of the automated apartment plan; I'll have all of my media anywhere, on any device via FTP, Media Server or file server. Cool. 

The Office

I received a few gadgets for my office for Christmas. I'm mounting my monitors at my desk which is mainly to raise the height of them for comfort. I got a new monitor with VESA holes for mounting and two incredibly good looking and sturdy brackets for mounting a monitor to a desk. I went for desk mounting rather than wall mounting so that they can move with me and to prevent me putting more holes in my walls. This change also makes my desk look very cool. The second monitor is on it's way and once installed, I'll upload a picture.

Windows or Apple

I've recently purchased a MacBook Air 11" as well. I used to have HP Mini Netbook and loved it. I wrote this blog on it, used it on my sofa and wrote code on it but as technology moved on it became very sluggish to the point where it was painful to type, let alone do anything else. I decided I needed to upgrade it and considered a touch-based solution so that I could use it as a normal laptop or as a touch-screen one. I opted for the Microsoft Surface however a few months later I have sold the Surface and have purchased a MacBook Air. 

For the Apple-haters out there, I didn't buy it because it was Apple, I spent many months looking over all-in-one windows machines, Android tablets, Netbooks, the Surface etc and none of them provided the size, weight and functionality I needed... except for the Surface and the MacBook Air. Unfortunately Microsoft just haven't got it right when it comes to Windows and Hardware at the moment, and until they do, I'm either an Apple or Google person.

I'm pleased to say that the MacBook Air is fantastic. It just does what it's supposed to well and fast. It's light and has great battery power. The only downside was that it was pretty expensive. I just hope that somebody can challenge Apple with a decent competitor and maybe we'll see a lower price in future. I think Dell are doing a half-decent job of this but the price is fairly similar from what I know... and of course it runs Windows 8 - the big downside.

Planned home automation system

Lights are just the beginning... that's what I've always said. When I first got a Raspberry Pi, my objective was to learn more about Linux and also to be able to type a command 'light on' and have a little LED turn on. I've progressed a little since then and now have the full automated lighting system I've mentioned above. 

Next, along with the motor experiment, I'll be looking at expanding the home automation system. My vision at the moment is to be able to wake up, walk over to a wall-mounted tablet which is displaying the weather, whether my trains are on time, what my schedule is etc, all on one page. No apps needed, no button presses etc, just there for me and personalised - the right information on the right day etc. 

I'm a little way off that now and I haven't thought about it anymore than the paragraph above. But it's the next plan.

Automating the lights at home part 2

Hey there, it's been a while.

Busy times lately, both at home and at work and the next two weeks are likely to be very busy so I thought I'd get blogging this weekend.

I've been working on Stage 2, or as I've heard it recently referred as, "Act 2".

I'm working on making the automated lights in my apartment, a product, rather than an amateur looking circuit. The soldering iron has been out and so far, the RF transmitter has been built into it's own standalone circuit rather than attached to the breadboard. Next up, trying to find or make some kind of case to put it all in.

So, the hardware is coming along nicely but no real changes. The software has had some updates though...

It now supports two new features:

Delays
If I want to delay a light switching on or off, a group of lights switching or a sequence activating... I can. I can choose 10, 20 or 30 seconds or 1 or 2 minutes. I tap the delay you want and then tap the light. Simple.

Group Leads
I can set which lights I want to be Group Leads. This means I can choose the Programs (Light,Group of Lights or Sequence) that I want to be set as 'Leads' for the group. So, for example, under the Living Room group, I have 'All Living Room On' and 'All Living Room Off' as the leads. All other programs for the Living Room group are then listed below.

Good progress I think. I'm glad I did it today as I have an LWP meeting tomorrow (LocalWebPath.com) and then a trip to see my Dad. After that I don't think I'll be doing any personal coding for a good couple of weeks.

Bike

A nice, short blog post.

After gaining my motorbike licence last September and buying all of the necessary safety equipment and accessories... I have finally purchased a motorbike.

A Yamaha Fazer FZ6 600cc

Automating the lights at home...

Never one to shy away from Gadgets, I've been hard at work Automating my lighting...

What does it do?
I can now control all of my lighting from the internet. I can group my lights e.g. "All Living Room on" and I can create sequences, such as "Turn all lights off except for the Bedroom". Another cool sequence is "Film" which turns on a back light behind my TV and one small lamp in the room but turns all other living room lights off. Adds to the 'Cool' of watching a film.

How does it work?
I have bought radio controlled sockets (very similar to typical timer sockets but radio controlled) and using my Raspberry Pi, have wired in a radio transmitter, allowing me to send radio signals to the sockets, to control them.

Then, I've written an interface for it in Php and using a MySQL database, have made it user friendly and incredibly flexible.

What did I need:

• 1x Raspberry Pi
• 1x RF Transmitter chip
• 8x RF controlled sockets (5 from Maplin, 3 from Clas Ohlson) 
• Shell scripting knowledge
• Php knowledge
• And some assistance from this project

Pictures

The beginnings... let's get an LED controlled via the Raspberry Pi

Moving on, let's build the circuit including the RF transmitter (needs some neatening, soldering and maybe packaging at some point). There are also some additional LED's in the circuit which aren't necessary.

And finally, the interface on my iPad

The next stage is to improve the interface and add the ability to schedule lights to come on and off. Great for when I'm on holiday.

Opening

Whirlwind week this week... I'll give the short version:

Last week I spent one evening "in" and that was on Thursday. Other nights that week I was out with friends, at Spanish lessons and at work team meals.

On Friday 1st, I attended a party in Bath, which resulted in a very drunk Knotty stumbling into a hotel at 3am. I got up, came home for 12:30, got my DJing stuff ready and packed for a work trip to Dubai and left my apartment at 4pm. I got home at 2am from DJing, managed 2 hours sleep and then got up for my flight to Dubai.

I returned home from Dubai on Tuesday at 10:30pm and spent the day in the office yesterday. Today I've been in London and tomorrow I'm in Northampton.

Tired? You better believe it.

I've had a great week though... and tonight Alex and I officially opened our business bank account, yet another great step towards us running everything officially. We have an online merchant, online shop, bank account and of course, we're a registered company. 8 months work and we have something great to show for it... now we need to increase the revenue.

Alex has been working on the Marketing and Finance and I've been working on the Technology. Lots of conversations with our data centre people regarding firewalls at 11pm this week. We do have a nice new mail client for our users though, which, this weekend, I intend to integrate right into our platform.

Got myself an iPad gadget as well, it's great for blogging like this on the train, sorting through work emails and doing documents while on the move. I used it a lot on the plane.

I also switched my home broadband to Sky last week and I'm impressed. It was as easy as they made it out to be, i'm saving per month and I have a faster connection. The Sky Hub looks pretty cool too.

Snow-Predictable

What a couple of days... and hardly any technology.

Before I mention the Snow (which is of course a mandatory requirement when Snow falls in the UK), I wanted to tell you all about the exciting world of Harry Potter, via my experience of the Harry Potter Studio Tour!

I don't want to go on like some Harry Potter obsessed nerd (ah-hem) so I'll just share a few pictures and tell anybody who likes special effects, the film industry and the Harry Potter series to make sure you check this out!

The Potion's Classroom

The Weasley's Kitchen

The Knight Bus

Hogwart's Gates

So... Snow. Yes, it snowed, it snowed a lot. Fortunately I had the day off so didn't have to work out whether the trains would be working etc. But... since most of the residents of my building (of whom I get on with all of them extremely well) were all sent home or weren't working today, we all pitched together to build an igloo! 

View from my window

Using our garden to make an igloo. A team effort

A nice day.

Photo Sharing

Now, on to technology. I tried sharing my photo stream today. I use lots of different methods to share pictures and move them about 'the cloud'. Dropbox, Google Drive, Sky Drive, Facebook. I have an Android phone and iPad so there isn't a one-step tool to do this available.

However, I thought I'd try sharing some photos with a friend via Photo Stream. Seems very easy to share however she wasn't sure what she should then do with the email she received. There is a big button on it but it'd be good to see what it actually does. I can't test it myself as it's my Photo Stream (I tried). -- UPDATE -- Just found out that she's on IOS5... and it's a feature that only works on IOS6. Ah Apple, so close.

A new business idea

Plans to meet two people for another business idea (BIG website idea - bigger than any project I've undertaken thus far) have had to be postponed due to the snow.

Local Web Path

And finally... We officially registered Local Web Path as a limited company this week and it was a really nice moment to receive the official certificates from Companies House. 

Now Streaming: A Mini Christmas

Well... Firstly, this post comes from my new shiny iPad Mini.

So it was a good Christmas... being horrendously ill a few days after aside. 

On the iPad, i've opted for the WiFi only version - for two reasons:

1. It's cheaper
2. I don't want to pay for a second data plan (again, cheaper).

I'm rarely going to need to be browsing the internet on my phone and iPad at the same time. I say rarely but actually I can't think of a single example of when I would need this. It's even more unlikely that I'll need to do this whilst on the move. So... I've gone for the WiFi only option and am using the Portable hotspot feature on my Samsung Galaxy SIII when out and about. I've set it to only allow authorised devices so it's safe and that way I have only one data plan and an iPad that can connect to the internet on the move! Sorted.

I also wanted to be able to take advantage of AirPlay but without spending £99 on an Apple TV. I will admit I am tempted with an Apple TV (maybe a birthday present...) for the full integration of iTunes (specifically the store) and also because it's the only device that supports AirPlay mirroring at the moment...

However, I didn't want to just jump in and buy an Apple TV, so I decided to use Raspberry Pi, which a few weeks ago, I'd setup as a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Server. 

I've installed Raspbmc, the image which has XBMC pre-installed.

And here's the result:

XBMC running nicely from the Pi.

Remote controlled via the iPad mini...

Run any video app, such as YouTube and select AirPlay

So that's video sorted... but what about playing any Audio that I want to in my living room...

Open Spotify on the iPad (or any audio application) and choose to AirPlay

And voila, My TV is playing my Spotify playlist, via the iPad. This leaves me the ability to use the iPad and is completely wireless. 

Beautiful.