Smart Home Projects

Audio & Video

Smart doorbell repeater - A cheap and reliable way to make sure our smart doorbell can be heard inside and outside our smart home.

We do a lot of smart home development and prototyping using Arduino devices and have developed some Arduino components to make this easier:

Infra-red pond lighting control - A cheap and reliable way for the smart home to control RGB lighting with an IR remote.
Relay Control Board (RELAY1) - A cheap and reliable way for the smart home to control mains powered appliances and devices.

Energy Management & Analysis 2022 - Analysis of our solar energy installation in terms of energy & cost savings.
Energy Management & Analysis 2022 - A smart home controller project to model our solar panels, battery storage and energy usage.
Hot Water Tank (June 2021) - Analysis of the sensor data generated by my hot water system.

In-roof solar on our extension
Residential Green Hydrogen Generation & Storage - a research project looking at green hydrogen generation and storage in support of our next off grid home.
Smart Home Energy Analysis - analysis of the impact of smart home solar installation project and the associated cost savings.
Smart Home Solar Water Heating - to use solar energy to pre-heat out hot water tank using the immersion heater.
Smart Home Solar Energy - installation of solar panels, battery storage and an EV charger, with smart energy management.
Tesla Backup Gateway Smart Home Integration Project - to fully automate our solar installation and energy management, by giving my contextual smart home all the information it needs to make the best decisions, resulting in improved whole home context and a zero touch user experience for us.
Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) - my experiments and learning with various VAWT designs.
Bicycle Hub Dynamo Charger - Charging phones and devices using your bicycle
Power over Etherent (PoE) Power Injection Board - NOTE: This project failed :-(
12V DC Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)

Smart Garden Lounge
Smart Pond
Robotic Lawn Mower - Intelligent control by my contextual smart home.
Garden Robot & Mower - Building my own garden robot that can also cut the grass.

House Extension HVAC Project - A project to update the heatings system in our whole home as we add a new smart home extension.
Smart Oil Heater - Using free power from our smart home solar installation project to heat our home using an oil heater under intelligent contextual smart home control.
New Gas Boiler - Making our central heating system more efficient and smarter.contextual smart home control.
Conservatory Roof Vents - 3D printed smart roof vent under intelligent contextual smart home control.
Heating Controller - Putting our central heating and hot water under full smart home control.
Smart Thermostat - My take on the smart thermostat.

Installing network cable trays in my loft.
Secondary Access Point - Setting up a temporary 2.4GHz Wi-Fi access point using an old hub/router, to allow connection of problematic smart home devices that only work on 2.4GHz.

My smart home connected waste & recycling bins enables my smart home to intelligently remind us to put the right bins out for collection.
My smart home connected wormery.

AC Current Transformer Sensor - Allows my smart home to track energy generation and usage.
AC Current Detection Sensor - Allows my smart home to track appliance usage.
Smart air quality sensor.
Sharp 2Y0A21 infra-red distance sensor - Using this sensor for detecting people.
Beam Break Sensor - My own design for a high performance, compact beam break sensor.
Light Level Sensor - A cheap way to enable smart home light level sensing.
8-Channel Digital Input Board IP1 - The best way to connect sensors to a smart home.
Fridge Temperature Monitoring
Lightning Sensor - A sensor to enable our smart home to detect lightning strikes up to 22 miles away.
Mains Power Failure Sensor - A sensor to enable our smart home to know when the mains power has failed.
Passive Infra-Red Motion Sensors - Connecting a wide range of wired, low-cost PIR sensors to my smart home to get the best performance and reliability without having to change any batteries.
Smoke Alarms & Detectors - Connecting dumb smoke detectors and smoke alarms to my smart home to make them really smart.
AC Voltage Detection Sensor - Allows my smart home to track appliance usage.

CAN Bus project - An evaluation of CAN Bus technologies for use in our Open-Source Sports EV (OSSEV) project.
Connected vehicle project - A simple way to connect and track vehicles.
Connected vehicle project V2.0 - An updated PCB with more sensing and battery power.

A simple 3D printed adapter to allow easy rotation of switch plates in my smart home.
A basic smart mirror used in our bathroom.