By Warren Miller, contributing writer
DIY projects are a great way to explore new hardware platforms, expand your toolkit, or just have some fun. For most engineers, a project that allows you to do all of these things and also create something useful is the most rewarding DIY project. These projects are also a perfect way to engage with the large DIY community locally and globally. Many of these shared projects serve as useful starting points for learning new tools, and any extensions or additions that you provide go back into the community to help someone else.
The BeagleBone Green Wireless platform is becoming a very popular extension of the standard BeagleBone kit. Like its name implies, it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth extensions that make it a useful platform for many IoT applications. Many projects have already been posted for it within the community. One popular project is a home control center.
Image source: Arrow Electronics.
To create a home control center, you start with the BeagleBone Green Wireless. It has two built-in Grove connectors, so you can connect two Grove sensors to monitor conditions in your home like temperature or air quality. You can connect to a Grove Relay Board, so you can also control the home environment by opening or closing blinds (for passive solar heating or cooling, or control an air conditioner, heater, or fan if you want to go old school).
To start, you’ll need a few things, including a Grove Base Cape for Beaglebone v2.0 to connect sensors to your BeagleBone Green Wireless. You can then connect the Grove Air Quality Sensor v1.3, which is used to detect the presence of carbon monoxide and other toxic gasses in your home. The Grove Temperature Sensor will allow you to monitor the temperature of your home, with a range of −40°C to 125°C (just in case you live in the Arctic Circle or the inside of a volcano). Finally, you’ll need a Grove Relay Board to control your household’s internal systems and appliances.
Once you have all of the materials (which you can easily order as a kit), it’s helpful to take a look at a sample project. This is the best way to get involved in the DIY community — find out what others have done, use that knowledge, improve upon it, and post it for others to benefit from. Here’s a good starting point on Instructables for jump-starting your project (if you haven’t visited Instructables, this is a good project to begin with, and you can even win a FREE BeagleBone Wireless by joining the Idea contest, linked at the bottom of the page).
All that being said, what conveniences would your home control center provide you with? For starters, you could set the air conditioning to the ideal temperature in your domicile on the way home from work, or turn on your porch light from the comfort of your own bed. You could disarm the home security system remotely if your significant other forgot the alarm code, avoiding those pesky calls to the security company or the police department. You could even preheat your oven to 350°F — the perfect temperature to make Mom’s famous meatloaf recipe — while you’re still at the grocery store buying the ingredients. Your home will become like an extension of your own brain, with your every passing thought and whim becoming a reality with just the push of a few buttons.
What a time to be alive.
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