The Hardware Of Jarvis: Sensors

With the development of Jarvis seeming to ramp up, I’m going to start getting into the development of hardware additions. After reading a series of blog posts by Rob Tennyson on building wireless sensor networks (http://www.robtennyson.us/post/building-wireless-sensor-networks), I decided that is the way I would go.

Then it dawned of me, instead of actually telling Jarvis that I am going to bed, like my prototype is setup right now, I would build something very similar to this wireless sensor setup, but have it be a single button arduino setup, that when pressed, sends a signal to Jarvis that I’ve gone to bed, then keeps track of the fact I’ve pressed it, so in the morning when the alarm goes off to wake me up, I can press it again it sends a signal that I’m awake, stopping the alarm and starting the “wakeupHandler” script that I’ve built.

Anyway, back to the original post idea. Wireless Sensor Building. The whole idea is to have a temperature sensor in each room of the apartment, and possibly one out front of the apartment. The end result I’m hoping for is to have Jarvis monitor the temperatures in each room and ensure the temperature stays above a threshold (i.e. 70 degrees), or a relative temperature to outside.

My hope is to get a hold of x10 hardware that controls a heater module, so Jarvis can communicate with the module in a room and only turn on the heater when it decides, rather than the heater kicking on by itself.

I’m also hoping to figure out how to use an IR (infrared) blaster to send commands to my Air Conditioner in the summer, but that’s down the road a bit.

Another neat feature I think would be fun to have is a series of sensors that monitor movement, if I’ve “logged out” of the apartment (for example, I leave for work) and the apartment is in “away” mode, if movement is detected, Jarvis can send me a tweet, instant message and email telling me which zone (or room of the apartment) that movement has been detected. At some point, I’d like to get cameras that will snap a picture when movement is detected and send it to me, along with an audible alarm, letting the person know the apartment is in “away” mode and that all of their activity will be noted and monitored.

Of course, the first step in this project is to really get hands on with the hardware that I will need, so it may be awhile before I can actually build my first sensor and once I get  it built, I will just duplicate the process a few times to create my network of sensors.

More to come on this

Thanks for reading!

Dan

Portland Wrestling Uncut – Jan 8th

On January 8th, 2013 Portland Wrestling Uncut held a live show. My wife and I attended the show. It was a really good show, here are a few pictures I got with some of the wrestlers. I unfortunately didn’t keep track of all the matches, however The Blanchard’s faced Exile and Wade Hess, Their manager the Grappler used a boot to hit Bubba Blanchard and Wade Hess got the pin-fall but the referee caught wind of the boot incident and reversed his decision. STILL THE CHAMPS!

The Pacific Northwest Tag Team Champions
The Blanchard’s

Davari faced Big Ugly in a match with a one hour time limit, about 15 minutes into the match, there was a spot where Davari pulled the ref down to the mat, the ref landed wrong and blood started pouring out of his nose, he called for a disqualification and named Big Ugly the winner but Davari kept the belt due to DQ.

The Pacific Northwest Heavyweight Champion
Former WWE/TNA Wrestler – Davari