What is the coolest feature of your Indigo setup?

Posted on
Tue Sep 16, 2008 5:54 pm
Matt offline
Posts: 406
Joined: Aug 13, 2006
Location: Northern Idaho

(No subject)

The coolest thing I have done with my home automation system is to incorporate my cell phone.

I installed Proximity ( http://reduxcomputing.com/proximity.php ) on four computers on my network and sync'ed them with my iPhone. Whenever the phone is in the vicinity or leaves the area, Proximity triggers a script and a variable change in Indigo. Certain lighting scenes and camera settings change as a result of a change with the variable.

Indigo runs a script every two hours to detect whether one of the computers is offline and changes the appropriate variables accordingly.

It's a cheap substitute for RFID detection.

Now when I leave the house (with my cell phone) Indigo sets the cameras to record motion when it is detected. It turns the lights off if it is day time or turns on the night time lighting scene if it is night time.

I also recieve text messages when someone calls my house, motion is detected when I am away from home, or if my IP address changes.

Posted on
Wed Oct 01, 2008 8:18 pm
wallachee offline
Posts: 141
Joined: Apr 30, 2005

(No subject)

Very cool Matt. Would you mind sharing the script to have the machines communicate. I've tested this out barely, but have problems with the logic. When my phone goes into a dead area and no computer can detect the bluetooth on my phone, my house thinks I'm not home...dumb house :-)

Thanks,
Bradley

Posted on
Tue Nov 18, 2008 12:25 pm
myoozishun offline
Posts: 3
Joined: Nov 18, 2008
Location: Chattanooga, TN

Taking care of my dogs...

I have a weather script that runs every half-hour, and it turns on/off my dogs' heated water bowl and dog house heat lamp when the temp hits certain thresholds. It gives me a better feeling about leaving them outside during the winter while I'm at work. :D

-Keith

Posted on
Mon May 11, 2009 2:38 pm
kd5crs11 offline
Posts: 108
Joined: Feb 09, 2009

(No subject)

I love this thread, and I've been waiting until I have something cool enough to post. Today I think I do:

I took two Harbour Freight Pressure Sensitive Mats (http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=96481), cut the alarm off, and hooked them to two DS10As. (That part of the idea came from someone in the Cocoontech forum.)

I then put one pad under the mattress on my side of the bed, and one on my wife's side of the bed. The mattress alone is a diffuse enough weight not to trigger the contact closure, but is enough when a person lays down on it.

Indigo then does a little dance with the variables, and when both DS10a's show closed for 5 minutes, it shuts off the bedroom light. As the parent of a 2 year old (with Legos) I've found that the topography of the floor is constantly variable, and it is really nice to see where you are walking all the way to the bed.

What makes this cooler than a remote by the bed, you ask? Well, if one person gets up in the middle of the night, Indigo turns on the bathroom light to 50%. Once both people are in bed again it turns it off. No fiddling around for remotes at 2am.

Further uses for a "people are in bed" sensor are left to the reader. :+D

(Total cost for two pressure sensitive mats and 2 DS10a's is about $25, so this one doesn't break the bank.)

Brian

Posted on
Mon May 11, 2009 3:13 pm
anode offline
Posts: 697
Joined: May 27, 2007
Location: NC

(No subject)

Have a motion sensor at the front door. When it gets triggered, it pauses the TiVo, turns on the peephole cam, porch light, and switches TV to PIP so I can see if I wanna answer the door.

Posted on
Mon May 11, 2009 3:52 pm
jay (support) offline
Site Admin
User avatar
Posts: 18200
Joined: Mar 19, 2008
Location: Austin, Texas

(No subject)

kd5crs11 wrote:
I love this thread, and I've been waiting until I have something cool enough to post. Today I think I do:

I took two Harbour Freight Pressure Sensitive Mats (http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=96481), cut the alarm off, and hooked them to two DS10As. (That part of the idea came from someone in the Cocoontech forum.)

I then put one pad under the mattress on my side of the bed, and one on my wife's side of the bed. The mattress alone is a diffuse enough weight not to trigger the contact closure, but is enough when a person lays down on it.

Indigo then does a little dance with the variables, and when both DS10a's show closed for 5 minutes, it shuts off the bedroom light. As the parent of a 2 year old (with Legos) I've found that the topography of the floor is constantly variable, and it is really nice to see where you are walking all the way to the bed.

What makes this cooler than a remote by the bed, you ask? Well, if one person gets up in the middle of the night, Indigo turns on the bathroom light to 50%. Once both people are in bed again it turns it off. No fiddling around for remotes at 2am.

Further uses for a "people are in bed" sensor are left to the reader. :+D

(Total cost for two pressure sensitive mats and 2 DS10a's is about $25, so this one doesn't break the bank.)

Brian


That's extremely cool! I'll toss in one of my projects that I did last week while on "vacation":

We have a hot water recirculating system in our house so that we have instant hot water. The trouble is that keeping it running 24x7, while not costing much in electricity, was causing our copper pipes to degrade at an accelerated rate. Since we built the house 6 years ago, we've had 3 hot water pipe leaks, all most likely caused by buildup in the pipes. Our water is pretty hard but nobody else in our neighborhood that we've spoken to have this problem, and none of them have a recirc system. I'm thinking that the recirc system, if not solely responsible, is causing pipe damage quicker.

So, I've installed a togglelinc so that we can turn it on/off at need. I set up a t/d action that turns it on at 7:30am and leaves it on for 2 hours during the week (we have a pretty predictable weekday schedule - everyone showers in the morning and that's the most important time to have instant hot water). There are a few problems though:

1) when we have company, showers are less predictable
2) weekends are far less predictable

To solve #1, I modified a script that I already have running that does special stuff when my houseMode variable is set to "company" and changed to something else - i just modified that script to turn the pump on/off as appropriate. Sure, the pump will run 24x7 while we have company, but that doesn't happen that often.

To solve #2, I installed SwitchLincs in the bathrooms on the lights, and when Indigo sees an instant on (double tap on), it turns on the recirc pump for 30 minutes. Also, an instant off also turns off the pump. This will require a little thought/practice to use, but I think it's probably the best way of handling it.

I also have a keypadlinc button linked to it so we can turn it on/off without having to go into the hot water heater closet where the switch is to turn it on/off.

All this stuff will end up in a wiki post at some point - I suspect that while there may not be an exact match, the theory is useful for other situations.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Mon May 11, 2009 4:05 pm
RJNobis offline
Posts: 27
Joined: Mar 14, 2009
Location: Goodyear, AZ

(No subject)

What kind of "peephole cam" are you using?

anode wrote:
Have a motion sensor at the front door. When it gets triggered, it pauses the TiVo, turns on the peephole cam, porch light, and switches TV to PIP so I can see if I wanna answer the door.

Bob N

Posted on
Mon May 11, 2009 4:23 pm
anode offline
Posts: 697
Joined: May 27, 2007
Location: NC

(No subject)

RJNobis wrote:
What kind of "peephole cam" are you using?



Actually its just an old x10 cam. Wrapped a few turns of some white elec tape and it fits in snuggly to the peephole. I plan on taking the cam apart, and making it a bit less ugly on the inside. And change the optics a bit.


Hey Jay, I have a http://www.redytemp.com pump. It has an adjustable temp setting, and only recirculates when the temp drops off. I have it set up with a x10 app module to turn on/off, then a x10 LV app to the aux switch which forces the pump on in spite of the temp. I run this about twice an hour (for about 15 seconds) to refresh the temp in the pipe ad let the auto feature take over.

Since I travel, its all off when away. But if its freezing outside I run it to keep the pipes from freezing. (mine is set up to pump the hot back down the cold water side.)

Posted on
Wed May 13, 2009 2:06 pm
kpfriedberg offline

(No subject)

kd5crs11 wrote:
I love this thread, and I've been waiting until I have something cool enough to post. Today I think I do:

I took two Harbour Freight Pressure Sensitive Mats (http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=96481), cut the alarm off, and hooked them to two DS10As. (That part of the idea came from someone in the Cocoontech forum.)

I then put one pad under the mattress on my side of the bed, and one on my wife's side of the bed. The mattress alone is a diffuse enough weight not to trigger the contact closure, but is enough when a person lays down on it.

Indigo then does a little dance with the variables, and when both DS10a's show closed for 5 minutes, it shuts off the bedroom light. As the parent of a 2 year old (with Legos) I've found that the topography of the floor is constantly variable, and it is really nice to see where you are walking all the way to the bed.

What makes this cooler than a remote by the bed, you ask? Well, if one person gets up in the middle of the night, Indigo turns on the bathroom light to 50%. Once both people are in bed again it turns it off. No fiddling around for remotes at 2am.

Further uses for a "people are in bed" sensor are left to the reader. :+D

(Total cost for two pressure sensitive mats and 2 DS10a's is about $25, so this one doesn't break the bank.)

Brian


Amazingly cool....did you just cut the magnet part off the ds10s and solder the wires together? Where do you keep each ds10s transmitters? I can't seem to find the ds10's for less than $20/ea...

Posted on
Mon Jun 08, 2009 12:56 pm
kd5crs11 offline
Posts: 108
Joined: Feb 09, 2009

(No subject)

Sorry for the late reply! I just saw it today.

Yep, just unscrew the wires from the reed switch and attach them to the leads off of the mat. I just twist the wires together and wrap them in electrical tape. Well, scotch tape.

The transmitters just live under the bed.

The open secret about X10 is that once they offer a sale on something they never remove the deal. So a link to a 5-for-1 deal is still good today even if it can't be found navigating their website. X10 deals are kind of a scavenger hunt.

New cool thing: after much work (mainly caused by my being really bad with a soldering iron, but much improved over the course of the project) I have built the first of my automated blinds. I started from the "Build Automated Blinds for ~$15" Instructable, but modifed it to work from IR control and to fit entirely within the top of the blinds. Right now the only part you can see is the IR sensor peeking up and the battery pack. The batteries could fit inside the blind, but I'm waiting to see how long they last.

Indigo and IRtrans provide the interface, of course. It sure is cool to open the blinds from my iPhone! Automated blinds are really one of those "home of the future" type moments.

I would guess that the cost for automating each blind will come pretty close to the $15 figure (not counting the blinds themselves). It was about $35 for the first one, and then 10-15 for each other blind.

Brian

Posted on
Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:21 pm
mmm offline
Posts: 27
Joined: Mar 01, 2009

(No subject)

kd5crs11 wrote:
I love this thread, and I've been waiting until I have something cool enough to post. Today I think I do:

I took two Harbour Freight Pressure Sensitive Mats (http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=96481), cut the alarm off, and hooked them to two DS10As. (That part of the idea came from someone in the Cocoontech forum.)

I then put one pad under the mattress on my side of the bed, and one on my wife's side of the bed. The mattress alone is a diffuse enough weight not to trigger the contact closure, but is enough when a person lays down on it.

Indigo then does a little dance with the variables, and when both DS10a's show closed for 5 minutes, it shuts off the bedroom light. As the parent of a 2 year old (with Legos) I've found that the topography of the floor is constantly variable, and it is really nice to see where you are walking all the way to the bed.

What makes this cooler than a remote by the bed, you ask? Well, if one person gets up in the middle of the night, Indigo turns on the bathroom light to 50%. Once both people are in bed again it turns it off. No fiddling around for remotes at 2am.

Further uses for a "people are in bed" sensor are left to the reader. :+D

(Total cost for two pressure sensitive mats and 2 DS10a's is about $25, so this one doesn't break the bank.)

Brian


This is brilliant. I read about this last night and ran to Harbor Freight to buy four sensors today. Set up two sensors under the master bed and I think I'm going to put two up under cushions on the couch...not sure why exactly yet but could give me better occupancy detection for the living room, turn on reading lights automatically when someone sits down, etc.

Thanks for sharing your idea!

Posted on
Wed Sep 16, 2009 2:26 pm
kpfriedberg offline

(No subject)

Matt wrote:
The coolest thing I have done with my home automation system is to incorporate my cell phone.

I installed Proximity ( http://reduxcomputing.com/proximity.php ) on four computers on my network and sync'ed them with my iPhone. Whenever the phone is in the vicinity or leaves the area, Proximity triggers a script and a variable change in Indigo. Certain lighting scenes and camera settings change as a result of a change with the variable.

Indigo runs a script every two hours to detect whether one of the computers is offline and changes the appropriate variables accordingly.

It's a cheap substitute for RFID detection.

Now when I leave the house (with my cell phone) Indigo sets the cameras to record motion when it is detected. It turns the lights off if it is day time or turns on the night time lighting scene if it is night time.

I also recieve text messages when someone calls my house, motion is detected when I am away from home, or if my IP address changes.


Matt, did you ever post the scripts you wrote to accomplish this? I'm sure many forum users would appreciate it (in addition to me). Thanks.

Posted on
Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:31 pm
Matt offline
Posts: 406
Joined: Aug 13, 2006
Location: Northern Idaho

(No subject)

Here's what I did to use my cell phone with Indigo as a proximity sensor.

I installed Proximity on all my home computers and added it to the login items list. Then I created two scripts. One for when the phone is in range and one for when it is out of range. Next I saved the scripts to a folder and configured Proximity to execute them when the phone is in or out of range.

In range script:
Code: Select all
try
   tell application "IndigoServer" of machine "eppc://username:password@192.168.0.197:3031"
      set value of variable "workingiMac" to "false"
   end tell
end try


Out of range:
Code: Select all
try
   tell application "IndigoServer" of machine "eppc://username:password:djibouti@192.168.0.197:3031"
      set value of variable "workingiMac" to "true"
   end tell
end try

For each computer I made a variable in Indigo. I also made another variable I called "working" The above script is run on the iMac in my office. The garage computer's variable is "workingGarage" (clever, I know.)

In Indigo I made two variable changed triggers for each variable created above (one trigger can be created by adding an if/then else statement to the script below).

When the variable becomes true (cell phone out of range), the following script is executed:

if value of variable "workingDining" is "true" and value of variable "workingiMac" is "true" and value of variable "workingGarage" is "true" and value of variable "workingLivingroom" is "true" then set value of variable "working" to "true"

So in order for "working" to be false, any of the computers must detect the cell phone in range. When the cell phone is in range, that computer tells the computer running Indigo to set "working" to "false"

Based on the state of the variable "working" different conditions are set in the house.

Posted on
Thu Sep 17, 2009 4:09 am
kpfriedberg offline

(No subject)

Matt, very helpful, thanks. One follow up...i assume you have Indigo running of only one of the Mac's, so how does for example, Proximity on one Mac not running Indigo, update the 'working' variable on the Mac running Indigo?

Posted on
Fri Sep 18, 2009 12:32 pm
Skiddy offline
User avatar
Posts: 149
Joined: May 06, 2008

(No subject)

I just thought I'd add to this thread by throwing out "Bluephone Elite" http://mirasoftware.com/BPE2/.

As well as bringing Caller ID and other nice features to the Mac with your Bluetooth enabled phone it also integrates nicely with Applescript. Like Proximity, it has an "in/out range" feature that could run applescripts to integrate with Indigo.

I'm using their free 2 weeks trial right now but it does look promising for $25 worth.

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