DIY HA bus

[James Hoye <jhoye@xxxxxxx>]

Reading a short article on automation in a magazine over the weekend
(either
Self-Build, Homes and Home Renovations or another one I can't think of)
there was mention of lighting controllers and how you could have a switch
to
turn all lights on/off etc.

It got me thinking how this could be achieved without spending masses of
money and I offer my ramblings...

Why not modify momentary push light switches?  You could use one of the
Dallas id chips (the size of a pinhead if you want) and 1-wire bus
technology to signal (over a simple twisted pair bus) a PC which switch was
activated.  Some clever software (well, not too clever) could then map
these
ids to some DIN mounted relays via some serial interface.  Each relay would
be connected to a single light.  This would give the ability to have
different scenes, all programmable via a PC.

Of course, you could use a triac? and be able to program the brightness
level for particular scenes.

With a touch screen too, you could choose the dim level and do many other
things too (like reprogram scenes) but that would involve (probably) a
serial bus.

As I said, just some thoughts.....  So tell me it's already been
done/wouldn't work and I'll shut up!!!

James (H)

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