Home Hacking and Automation: Initial Ideas

It's early in the morning and I can't fall back asleep, so I might as well start with my initial ideas for hacking a house. (I'll clean up this post and add links later)

Hacking can sometimes be seen as a bit of a derogatory word, but I like its underlying meaning. Wikipedia describes a hacker as follows:

In home and hobby circles, a hacker is a person who heavily modifies the software or hardware of their own computer system. It includes building, rebuilding, modifying, and creating software (software cracking, demo scene), electronic hardware (hardware hacking, modding), or anything else, either to make it better or faster or to give it added features or to make it do something it was never intended to do. Hobby home computer hacking originated around the MITS Altair, yet the spirit of hacking has been embodied in real projects since the advent of simple tools.

I wouldn't describe myself as a creator, more of a hacker/bodger/kludger. I like to fix broken things, but I'm lazy so I usually borrow something that has already been made and adapt it to suit my needs (rather than create something from scratch).

The purpose of this blog is do document my attempts to hack and improve a house.

So far I've only ever rented flats or houses, and I've been unable to make any permanent improvements as my landlords would frown upon my ideas (and I'd have to remove the mods when I moved out anyway). I'm a geek and love technology, so I've tried to bring the benefits of this into places I've lived.

Over the years I have (with help from various geeky housemates, especially Dan) done many hacks and projects. A majority of this happened in a 7 bed shared house in Redland, Bristol:

We installed a house wide cat5e Gigabit network (dubbed Wonderland)

Circa 2006: At its maximum we had 2Tb of shared music, films and tv across 14 PCs

Setup a touch screen based HTPC system (integrated with the existing tv and hifi system) with network sharing and synchronization called Nucleus. Dan did most of the hard coding work that made this possible. It was very close to being finished, but we all moved out and the project lost momentum, however it is still available for download at SourceForge!
Configured a mini-itx based Linux based router to share and monitor/graph internet usage (based on the vnStat project). This was very useful in a shared student house, and I continued to use it for the next few years of house sharing.
Built a pair of homemade speakers and portable battery powered amp (which, thanks to Dan, sound absolutely amazing!) We made a separate project website at: http://ppamp.dineley.com. This was designed for audiophiles and it had the potential of being a commercial success, but the momentum ran out and the market was flooded with cheap iPod docks.
And other things (which I can't remember now)

Back to the present. I'm in the process of buying my first house with my fiance Becky. We've not exchanged contacts, so the house isn't ours yet, but I keep on getting carried away and thinking ahead of the potential awesome technology I could add to a house.

Home automation
I've seen some cool projects on the internet (usually via hackaday) and the home automation has always caught my attention. In fact, I've been thinking of automating a house since I was in primary school (I wanted automatic closing curtains in my bedroom).

Below are some of the things I would like to hack in my house:

Floor level LED lighting on the stairs, with automatic triggers when walking up/down. This is ideal for evening/night time (and if I'm too lazy to turn on the light switch).
Inspired by:
Sean's Automated hallway Skirtingboard Lighting
a StarScape customer project
ElJefeUno's Stairway LED lighting with IR trip sensor
Illia's Automatic Led Stairs Controller
Alan Parekh's Stair Lights

LED lighting above work surfaces in kitchen (mounted under cupboards above the surfaces).
Inspired by:
Esterill's How to fit LED kitchen lights with fade effect
DJJules's Build LED Under Counter Lighting that ROCKS!

LED lighting along the tops of cupboards in kitchen, and possibly around the edge of the ceiling in rooms to give nice gentle indirect lighting. Remote controllable from smartphones?

Inspired by:

dlewisa's LED Indirect Lighting

Integrated LED lighting in garden. Possibly built into the garden/patio itself.

Inspired by:
cw-kid's LED Strip Lighting Project: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

CCTV system linked to home server/internet/smartphone
Keyless entry to house (has major potential security risks, so not too sure about this)
Fully integrated HTPC/media system in living room which also links to speakers across the house/garden for distributed media playback
Central media server for all music and video file storage and backups (probably a commercial NAS solution as they are more power efficient than a full PC)
Computer controlled heating/climate control
Wireless charging for smartphones on bedside tables. (As I write this on my smartphone I have a micro USB cable wedged uncomfortably against my hand)

And there is probably more. I will try to make a proper to do list of things that is more organised. Maybe install a blogger todo list plugin (if they exist).

Technologies/tools/parts at my disposal
I've done a little research into other peoples home related hacks and the Arduino seems to be incredibly popular. I'm not a natural programmer, but the coding seem to be relatively straightforward and there are plenty of resources and support online for hackers like me.

I also picked up one of the first RaspberryPi Linux development boards. While not as mature as the Arduino, I think this could make an ideal 'overlord' style controller that oversees various independent Arduino sub-systems and coordinates the overall house hack.

LED Dioder strip lights (think IKEA, but cheaper ones available from eBay) are perfect for most of my lighting ideas and saves time on manually soldering and designing a lighting system from scratch (and they're waterproof!)

The Internet! Without Tim Berners Lee's invention of the world wide web none of this would be possible!

Anyway, I've spent far too long waffling on about my ideas. More important things need to be done before I can start (or afford) any of these hacks (like actually getting the house and moving in)!

I am determined to make at least some of these hacks possible. If I plan ahead properly and make the early prototypes in a modular fashion then it should be easier to adapt and link them all together with some form of computer control (and I'll actually stand a chance of getting some of it completed)!

I will add as many links to this post as I can find, and probably share interesting related hacks on this blog until I get started on the house hacking (which hopefully will be in the next few months).

Here are some more links to things that that are useful reference: