1999-03-01 09:00:00+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
It's spring, when a young man's heart and fancy turn to thoughts of "the next big thing". Well, I've been playing with these little Atmel AT90S1200 chips, $1.50 quantity 10, a K of ROM, 32 byte sized registers, a bit of EEROM that stays around even when power's off, 15 I/O pins including an A/D converter, and there are other variants with the same instruction set that do different things, more EEROM, RAM, A/D converters, RS-232 line drivers, stuff like that. And I've been wondering what nails need to be pounded down with such a hammer. Well, I'm helping a coworker build a Pinewood Derby arbitrator that will, by way of blinking lights and such, stop the fistfights amongs the parents. But the market for Cub Scout accessories is limited. With that in mind, a couple of links for ideas and applications that might benefit from moderately smarter appliances that know a little bit about their environment: One place to start is Dan Hoehnen's Home Automation Index Home Automator magazine. Circuit Cellar Ink is the offspring of the old Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar that was in Byte (back when it was a real magazine, in the '80s). They've got the HCSII line of modules which specifies an RS-485 based protocol. MisterHouse: The Winter Family's (sometimes not-so) "smart" house among other things automatically closes and opens window blinds, manages the heating, venting and insulation systems that they're claiming a $200 annual heating bill (in Minnesota!), and has a web interface So now the questions are:
- How can I integrate this with the IR port on my Pilot?
- How can I install appliances that use existing interfaces which I'm already using (ie: the snooze button on my alarm clock) to do cool stuff?
- How do I tie all these things together at a higher speed than X-10 allows without running new wires?