Home automation has a lot of meanings. For some home automation is about hitting a button on a large remote control that starts up the fire place. For others, it may be remotely checking on your house via your phone, turning on lights, or controlling your heating and cooling system. And, home automation might also mean energy and resource management like power monitoring or water metering. The great news for us is that there are many ways to get started with home automation – you don’t have to tackle all of the possibilities all at once – many neat things you can do.
A video on YouTube surfaced describing some home brew home automation by Andy Leer. Andy walks us through a very useful home automation project to control and monitor his garage door. His setup includes an ioBridge IO-204 in which he has multi-purposed for many projects including some home automation with X10, monitoring temperature, and controlling fighting robots with his iPhone.
Andy not only wanted to control his garage door opener, but he also wanted to know whether the garage door was opened or closed. Using one of the channels on the IO-204 he connected a magnetic reed switch acting as a sensor to determine if the garage door was opened or closed.
Andy has more ideas for some home automation projects. He mentions in the video that he will be monitoring the status of his washer and dryer to email him when his laundry is ready.
