Create Home "Status Board"

[mfranzel]

Hi all,

I thought of an interesting project idea, but when it came to designing it, that is where I got stuck.

 

With all of this technology, our family too is automated! When the wash is done, I get an alert on my phone. When it is time to feed the dogs, alert. So many alerts for so many different things. Some alerts only happen if other things happen. I really do love my system!!

 

Heres the problem... I will get an alert and forget about it. That is when I had this idea... I would make a board or display of some sort with whatever the activity, room, problem etc is and have individual LEDs next to them as well as buzzers for certain ones.

 

For example, when it is time to feed the dogs, I will get an alert on my phone and the GREEN light next to FEED THE DOGS on the board starts blinking. When I have fed the dogs, I tell the system somehow (maybe a KPL or just through the iPhone app, not as important... or maybe a button on the display?) then the light is solid green. At midnight, the dog feeding status resets itself and the other LED is solid red. The next time it is time to feed the dogs, red goes off, notification to phone, green led flashing. Make sense? Maybe even add a buzzer or beeping sound in there to say "hey lazy ***, get up!"

 

Another example... laundry. When the laundry machine is off, the green light will glow all the time. When I do the laundry and the machine is running, red can flash. When the laundry is done, red off and green can flash. Same would apply for the dryer.

 

I was thinking about doing this with appliance adapters, 12v adapters and 12v LEDs, but then I realized I would need like 75 of the damn appliancelins! I have seen other projects be completed using Arduino or RaspberryPi and obviously circuit boards of something... but I have never worked with anything like that.

 

Does anyone have any ideas about how I could do this? Has something like this been done before? I am looking for something that I could build nice and big and put on the wall so everyone in the house knows whats going on. No more feeding the dog 3 times or forgetting to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer and then having to do the load again because it stinks.

 

Thanks guys!!!

[madcodger]

GREAT idea! Would probably have great WAF, too (though predicting that is a challenge for many of us). What about something that gives a dashboard on an iPad, which would allow for an easy place to turn off the alert, as well? It could be sent to all the iPads/phones in the house, and the person who completed the task could turn off the alert. I would gladly buy that for a reasonable price if someone offered it via a third party (sort of like a 3rd party plugin used with HomeSeer, etc).

[mbrett]

How about using an ezio sprinkler module, it allows you to control 8 separate zones, each zone represents an led on your board. The other thing is you can try "growl" to send push notifications, just not sure if there is an app that allows the notifications to be added to a list. Might be an easier option on an android tablet as opposed to an Idevice.

[arw01]

I say a web page on a tablet, using the rest interface and a page that reloads itself every minute of so with refresh= meta tag should allow you to make something like this up with html 5. Don't know which tablets have the best support for that with sound etc, but that would be the angle I would explore.

 

Alan

[87squirrels]

My approach would be a program running (on anything, Raspberry Pi would be great) that subscribes to ISY events. Define a bunch of ISY variables for your statuses, and have your program control the LEDs (or manage a web page, or a dedicated LCD display) when the variable updates are seen.

You could also track device or program status the same way.