(07-23-11) Automatic Kitchen Sink Light

Today I added an automatic kitchen sink light. I set up a motion detector to turn on the light whenever someone is in the kitchen, and then it will shut off again in a few minutes after the movement stops. All of the bits and pieces are X10 things that had been unused for a long time, so the only cost was about $8 for a fluorescent light.

It was a bit of a mess to drill the holes to hide the wires, but it was a fun project.

In other news, and thanks to the creator of the Digital Home Server (a very cool Home Automation front-end), I found www.supertweet.net, a site that allows old basic authentication to work with twitter instead of the new OAuth that Twitter has added for security. I'm so happy that my old twitter programs are working again. :)

(07-19-2011) Roomba Scheduling with EventGhost

Tonight I created an automated Roomba scheduler. I used EventGhost to record the "Clean" command from the IR remote and then play it back using a batch file. I then went into TaskScheduler to run the even every day at 9AM (This will be replaced with my own program - Chronos eventually). The hardware I'm using is a USBUIRT for the infrared input/output and the vacuum is an iRobot Roomba 530.

I would like to monitor the dock in the future to notify me of when the Roomba is docked or away.

Addendum: I thought that the Roomba dock might be issuing an IR command to tell the Roomba where the dock is, and that I might be able to read this and tell when Roomba was away. After some experimenting I have found this is not the case. Back to the drawing board.