Collaboration on open source home monitoring / automation

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Collaboration on open source home monitoring / automation

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tterragcnoom

Hi jcw,

I'm building currently building a home with my brother in Portland OR, one of the "greenest" homes in the US (http://pdxlivingbuilding.com). I'm a software engineer by trade and have been attempting to build a home monitoring and automation platform with the goal of reducing energy load. I've essentially duplicated a lot of the things you've done except I've used xbee's and arduino's. I'm sure I'm not the first. Anyway, I was considering switching to the jee platform. It seems you're working on similar things and also have a much lower hardware cost. I'm wondering if you would be interested in partnering up to work on said platform. I'm no electrical engineer, but I've been able to stick things together. I am however, an excellent (if I may say so myself) software engineer with lots of experience (I'm the lead web and iPhone developer at the company I work for).

I'm really impressed with what you have working so far, and would love to help add to it. Some things that I would like to see implemented and would be willing to help with:

- Some kind of security, through hashing or encryption potentially
- Adding a mesh capability (similar to xbee / zigbee)
- Adding an API mode (similar to xbee / zigbee)
- Remote program / firmware upgrades (don't know if this is possible. Are jee nodes / links, etc running a bootloader?)

I don't know if any of this is implemented, I haven't looked around extensively yet, I thought I'd gauge your interest first. Hopefully this all comes off as admiration and appreciation, I'd love to help and make the platform better.

Thanks for building what you have!

-Garrett

Posted 25/08/2009 19:45:47
jcw

Wow, yes, yes, yes, yes :)

Slightly longer response:

- Encryption: I was thinking of adding perhaps an XTEA layer above the current RF12 driver.
- Mesh would be grand, I know little about it - you might also want to check out http://code.google.com/p/strobit/source/browse/#svn/trunk/widgetmesh, it would be nice to work together on this.
- API mode - I'm not familiar with this: do you mean a packet mode? The RF12 driver does that currently.
- I've got a prototype sketch working for remote upgrades (protocol and logic). It requires two things: a 328 remote node (the 2K 168 boot area is too small), and a boot server (I'm using an EEPROM added to a JeeNode). It all looks feasible.

So yeah - if you want to push some of these things, I'm all for it. As you can imagine, I'm pretty much swamped between all the things going on around here. What you describe is really what JeeNodes are all about - making a bunch of extremely low-cost yet capable components work for us. Energy monitoring, house automation wherever it makes sense, and having fun :)

Posted 25/08/2009 22:12:31
tterragcnoom

Great! I'm thrilled to start playing around. I'll keep you posted in the direction I head. I think maybe I'll look into the XTEA encryption (or possibly XXTEA?). I actually have a lot of stuff going on in the "real" world right now, but I'll definitely be throwing my free time into this.

Regarding the API mode, the more I think about it the more unnecessary it seems. It looks like all the applicable benefits of Xbee's /Zigbee API mode have been rolled into your packetization.

Oh, and looking around your posts and the forums some more, I am overwhelmed by what you've done – waayyy beyond what I've done. So, I'll do my best at helping out :) though hopefully my efforts aren't so remedial as to just take up your time.

So exciting! Tonight I have to figure out what parts and kits to buy to build some of these things!

Posted 26/08/2009 15:43:57
andreas-kupries

@tterragcnoom

I notice that you are in Portland, OR, or around that. May I point you to the Tcl Conference we are holding there this year ?
(http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2009/)

While JCW is apparently not attending this year some other hardware hackers, like Steve Redler (http://wiki.tcl.tk/9112), should. Steve is working with PIC and AVR IIRC.

And maybe we can convert you to Tcl ;)
(Which is used quite a bit with Jee stuff also.

Posted 01/09/2009 22:48:37
tterragcnoom

Sounds interesting. I'd never heard of Tcl until I came across Jee stuff (and now I'm seeing it everywhere of course).

You'll never convert me to Tcl, but I'm always happy to add languages to my repertoire :) I'll check out the conference, though it might be a bit early for me to be going to a conference; I find these things a bit more beneficial when I actually know what the heck people are talking about :)

Thanks for the suggestion.

Posted 02/09/2009 01:02:05
seaton

I'm interested in this guys, however pretty time poor at the moment due to project commitments at work. (prob for the next month or so)

I've started work on a mesh protocol that will be compatible with the jeenodes (see JCW link above) and is based on Contiki OS, the hello-world example currently runs on the Atmega168 (no networking yet), Ultimately the platform of choice will be 328P, but since it's based on Contiki it can easily be ported to other hardware platforms i.e. ARM7 for a gateway device or under a simulation environment for development and tesing.

My wiki notes can be found here (what little there is) - http://code.google.com/p/strobit/wiki/WidgetMesh

Contiki does have support for loadable modules which is a way of doing network upgrades, however memory will always be a constraint with these devices.

Any collaboration welcomed.

Regards,

Stephen...

Posted 09/09/2009 01:55:06