The project.

Why I have started the project? Simply because I wanted protect my house from burglars.

Some years ago we've started build a house and the idea sparked in me that I can actually create a security and monitoring system my-self. I've been playing with Arduino and Atmega uCPUs and I wanted to use it for some real project. In the house I have put all the wires for PIR sensors, smoke alarms and entry panels. And along with it I've started researching wire and wireless protocols and possibilities. Step by step I've become more and more interested in the idea and the project started.

What it should do? It should replace standard home security alarms, and in future gather statistics from various sensors and do some home automation.

Some of the functions are already there. I have RS485 nodes connected to main board and talking with it over one twisted pair. I have library created that works with the half duplex receiver/transmitter, handles the communication, packets, and is able to detect contention and errors during transmission. Then I have the hardware ready for widely used and reliable RFM12B radio which will be used for cases where wires are not possible or more preferred. There is also Ethernet module working that can serve web pages for communication and configuration.

What is the mission? I must say I'm happy with this project. It is working well and brings me a lot of joy. I went through several version of software, hardware and design and still I'm not discouraged by all the little pitfalls it has brought along. And because I'm reader of hackaday I've decided to enter the TheHackadayPrize and started to post some project news. This just led me into idea that someone else can benefit from my project or better someone can join and add new features or hardware. In the future I will be posting here the project logs, schematic, source code and documentation.