Smart Home Blog 2021

Got some 12V dc colour-changing LED pond lights for Christmas, to go in our smart pond. These come with an infra-red remote control, which will replaced by an IP gateway.

My smart pond project is complete and the pond prepared for winter.

My 150W pond heater arrived today, just in time as the weather is turning more wintery. This is part of my smart pond project and will be intelligently controlled by my contextual smart home based on ambient temperature.

Interesting challenge today, encapsulating the LED strips in clear expoxy resin. I did an initial pour to about 3mm depth and will re-test the strips to ensure this hasn't affected them.

The smart garden lounge composite decking is complete!

Second day installing the composite decking and the smart garden lounge decking is nearly complete. Rain stopped us and I have also run out of T-clips. Some more have been ordered.

The composite support joists are installed for my smart garden lounge project

The concrete foundations are complete for my smart garden lounge project

Installed the composite fencing behind the smart pond.

My composite decking and fencing was delivered today, for my smart 'garden lounge' project. About £1700 and weighing 850Kg!

Completed the installation of my 'Shed Path Light'. This LED strip is under full contextual smart home control and is a zero touch user experience.

Finally finished digging the last bit of trench! This takes the power and networks into my shed, to be connected up with power and networking already installed there. The next job was to run the rest of the cables through the ducting and bury it all.

The patio catches the morning sun but, it looks like my recent digging may have killed the grape vine :-(

I'm now finishing the final stage of trench work, to get the network and power cables into my shed.

It's been a big job but, the patio is finally completed! It's fair to say that my hands and arms are suffering a bit will the daily manual labour involved.

The new smart pond is pretty much complete :-) The grass seed has taken well. I've got new composite fencing arriving, which will allow me to finish the back of the pond.

This is the 45cm deep trench along the back of the patio. 25mm conduit is being used to run both mains power cables and 4 Ethernet networking cables. I'm using armoured power cables and these run about 30cm below the network cables.

As I started to lift up some of the patio stones, I realised a lot of them had already moved due to roots from the plants next door. This basically meant I had to lift up the whole thing and will have to re-lay it all :-( With the patio lifted up, the scale of the root problem can be seen. Some are over 30mm thick and run into the lawn.

The marked out area here shows my planned smart 'garden lounge'. Knowing the shape and size, I can now order the composite decking required.

These last few days, I've also been working on a project to enable voice announcements.

Spend this morning digging trenches for this 25mm conduit. 70m of it in total, to contain network cables and armoured power cable. This is for my patio, smart pond, garden lounge and future hot tub.

I'm still busy 3D printing the brackets to allow me to start fixing my cables trays in place. I'm currently 3D printing three every day, since they take just over 3 hours to print each one.

I have designed and started 3D printing the brackets for my loft network cable tray project.

Ordered a load of cable tray hardware to tidy up the network cables in my loft. The goal is to tidy up the current cables and install a few more. This is just half of the eight 3m × 100mm trays and I also have some 90 couplings. This is a practice run for my next, self-build smart home. Hardware costs were about £140 including delivery. More on this project.

And this is the 3D printed for the GJD Opal XL PIR sensor. It works perfectly.

I order to mount the GJD Opal XL PIR sensor better into vertical corners, I designed a new sensor module mount for 3D printing.

This week, I'm reviewing the GJD Opal XL PIR sensor.

This week, I've been doing some more data analysis on my hot water system.

Work on my new smart pond has been halted by lots of rain.

Spent most of today coding in Java, updating and training neural nets as part of my smart home's artificial intelligence. The focus of today's work was on better detection of when a question has been asked.

Today, I'm evaluating this non-contact liquid sensor.

The focus of my work this week has been on my robotic lawn mowers and a project to integrate a robotic lawn mower with my contextual smart home.

The focus of my work this week has been on my smart home diagnostics. This is a number of 'views' that give real insight as to how well my smart home is working.

Although, I generally avoid Wi-Fi for smart home sensors and devices, sometimes it is handy to be able to add a wireless multi-sensor in a room. To achieve this, I've developed my own temperature, humidity and light level projectbased upon the NodeMCU ESP8266.

I have 3D printed a mount for the proximity sensor for the reactive smart mirror in our ensuite bathroom.

My project to build a reactive smart mirror for our ensuite bathroom is progressing really well.

My 3D printer activity monitoring project is tested and complete :-)

This Moorebot Scout caught my eye recently. It's an AI-powered autonomous home robot with 1080p camera and night vision. I have backed this project on Kickstarter.

I've been updating my 3D printer activity monitoring project, to allow my contextual smart home to better detect when my Ender 3 Pro 3D printer has finished printing.

I'm working with a friend on an Arduino module to support Power over Ethernet (PoE) for smart home applications. We hope to have the first prototype off to manufacturing very soon. This will work with other boards such as my Arduino Mega2560Pro project.

This is my PIR sensor and new 3D printed mount.

I wasn't happy with the supplied mount that came with an external PIR sensor, so I designed my own to be 3D printed.

This morning, I've been doing even more work with Apple iOS shortcuts on my iPhone. You don't have to be embedded in the Apple eco-system to be able to do really powerful things in the contextual smart home. You don't even need to use HomeKit.

More testing on my Arduino Mega2560Pro project to make this another of my smart home smart home building blocks.

I'm doing more work on my lighting smart switches this week.

I've designed an enclosure for my cycle USB charger circuit, to be 3D printed.

The PCB and parts arrived, to allow me to build up my new cycle USB charger circuit and test it.

This week, I've been working on a project I've been meaning to do for ages. It's a sensor to detect my washing machine playing a tune, which signals the end of the washing cycle.

This is now working really well!

This week, I've been doing more on my connected vehicle project. The objective is simply to use my cars to provide additional useful context to my contextual smart home.

The object of this 5V relay board project is simply to provide a cheap and reliable way to control high-current, mains-powered (240Vac and up to 10A) appliances and lighting, fully integrating them into my smart home and allowing intelligently control.

I've been evaluating and reviewing the RCWL-0516 microwave motion sensor and I've been really impressed with it. This is a big step forward in smart home occupancy detection.