In my last post, I explored alarm monitoring using the Raspberry Pi and Arduino.  I thought I’d give the Electric Imp a try as well.  The Electric Imp is a WiFi module and Cortex-M3 processor built into an SD card form factor and available on Sparkfun for $30.  It needs a few extra bits like an ID chip to function but I picked up an Electric Imp Shield on Sparkfun to make it easy.  To configure [...]

I spotted a post by Lior Hass on Hackaday a little while back where he described his Alarmino project where his alarm system now connects with an Arduino and a custom board to simulate the phone line and interpret Contact-ID protocol.  He could then get the system to SMS him in the case of an alarm.  In his case, he did this in lieu of using a central monitoring service and it only reported events that would [...]

In order to monitor our power consumption at our house, I set out to install a  TED (The Energy Detective) system.  The system monitors current flow into the house using inductive taps.  In our case, we have two panels each of which required two inductive clamps (on the incoming power lines near the top of the photo). Each pair of inductive clamps connects to a small box at the base of the power panel.  The [...]

The Tweet-a-Watt was one of the first projects I built from an article in Make magazine. I’ve since built many more.  It also introduced me to Limor Fried and her company Adafruit.  It turns out I already had the very Kill-a-Watt unit in use which was to be modified for the project.  So mostly I needed the XBees and some other parts.  The full Adafruit tutorial is here. The XBee was a tight fit in [...]

In December I received and mounted the Moore Pattern Kinetic Sculpture that Jeff Lieberman designed (from a KickStarter sponsorship). Although the motor is very quiet, I used an X10 module and motion sensor to only activate the sculpture for a couple of minutes when people approach. I used the X-10 MS16A sensor (for about $15). These later generation X10 motion sensors are nice in that they have a programmable internal timer and can send the [...]