a Serial LCD
The idea:
A
few years ago I started a home-automation system based on the
Velleman product k8055. But as many projects, it was always in
development mode, so never operational. A year ago I had some spare
time and decided to boost this project. And in the beginning of this
year I had a system up and running.
The disadvantage of the Velleman stuff, is that everything uses wires, so
no wireless communication. A few months ago I discovered the Jeelabs
website. I mailed Jean-Claude because I had no idea were
to start with the Jee-stuff. I was very happy when Jean Claude
invited me at his home to see the Jeenodes. I bought the starters kit
and started right away. Since that period the total project was
boosted with enhancements new features, (and a lot of bugs).
The
equipment moved to the electricity closet in our house, wired the moisture sensor,
electricity en gas sensors,
connected the thermostat in our living room etc
but then I faced a problem. The server running the daemons is an old laptop with
OpenSolaris as Operating System. (Yes I work for Sun, in the future
Oracle) The graphical display is in the electricy closet, so difficult
to use. And a local display was useful. So I looked at the starters kit and decided to create a
serial LCD display for the server. I have a jeenode and a Jeelink
connect to the server. The Jeelink for receiving and sending
messages, and a Jeenode for the LCD display. On the Jeenode I also have a Pressure sensor.
Problem was that everything was just a bundle of wires with a lot of tape to
keep things together.
Today I finished my LCD project. It is now official in “production”
and covered in a nice plastic box. I used a standard plastic
electricity box from the local shop (praxis). Drilled some holes and used hot
glue to hold everything together. On the outside you see the LCD and
a button with a LED. If you press the button the light goes on or off.
For the button I used a blink plug with one Led and one push-button. The push-buttons delivered
with the blink plug were to small, and I had only one switch with a slightly longer shaft.
The LCD displays the server load, last message in my Jeelogfile, temperatures inside, outside,
electricity-closet and the temperature in our bedroom. The rooms board "lives" in a old
computermouse:
The LCD sketch is
here:
This is the relevant part of the script to send information to the LCD
"cat /k8055/lcd/line2.txt /k8055/lcd/line1.txt | perl -ne 'chomp;printf "%-40s", $_;' > /dev/term/0"
(Click on the images to enlarge)
A
few years ago I started a home-automation system based on the
Velleman product k8055. But as many projects, it was always in
development mode, so never operational. A year ago I had some spare
time and decided to boost this project. And in the beginning of this
year I had a system up and running.
The
equipment moved to the electricity closet in our house, wired the moisture sensor,
electricity en gas sensors,
connected the thermostat in our living room etc
but then I faced a problem. The server running the daemons is an old laptop with
OpenSolaris as Operating System. (Yes I work for Sun, in the future
Oracle) The graphical display is in the electricy closet, so difficult
to use. And a local display was useful. So I looked at the starters kit and decided to create a
serial LCD display for the server. I have a jeenode and a Jeelink
connect to the server. The Jeelink for receiving and sending
messages, and a Jeenode for the LCD display. On the Jeenode I also have a Pressure sensor.
