Armadillo Home Automation

This Home Automation project manages and operates various electrical systems inside a house such as lights, appliances and outlets. This project uses 4D Systems’ Armadillo-43T.

Armadillo

The project lets the user set the mode to manual or automatic. In manual mode, the user is able to turn on or off a certain outlet or device. While in auto, the user can just set how much time until he wants to turn on or off all the devices connected. In this mode, the user is not able to toggle the devices manually but he can revert back to manual at anytime. The user is given two modes for the automatic, ALL DEVICES ON and ALL DEVICES OFF. To trigger the relays that turns on and off the devices, the Armadillo utilizes its GPIO capabilities. When in manual mode and a button is detected to be pressed, the Armadillo will toggle the respective GPIO pin. When in automatic, the Armadillo will simply turn all pins to LOW or HIGH depending on the settings of the timer.

The Armadillo is our solution to the display and prototyping demands. The Armadillo runs on the BCM2835 SOC combined with the ARM1176JZF-S CPU Processor with a VideoCore IV GPU in a single package. The Armadillo is developed to utilize the Armadillian Operating System, which is largely based on Raspbian/Debian OS and optimised for the BCM2835 SOC. It is packed with 13 GPIO which has 2 Single I2C Channels, 5 Single SPI Channels and 2 UART Channels. 2 PWM channels are also available which is shared with the on-board amplifier with mini-speaker. It also has a USB port which can be used for peripheral devices such as keyboards, USB Hubs, Wi-Fi dongles and Bluetooth modules.

How it Works

Step 1: Build

Modify the extension outlet as shown in the image below. Add wire extension from the open ended connection. These wires will be connected to the relay module.

Connections

Connect the components as shown in the image below.

Armadillo to Relay Module connection:

• Pin1 (GPIO37) to In1

• Pin2 (GPIO38) to In2

• Pin3 (GPIO39) to In3

• Pin4 (GPIO35) to In4

• Pin5 (GPIO36) to In5

• Pin6 (GPIO45) to In6

• Pin9 (GND) to GND

• Pin10 (+5V) to +5V

Connect the modified extension outlet’s extended wires to the relay module as shown in the image above.

Step 2: Program

Open the Armadillo-43T Datasheet and follow the instructions on how to install the Armadillian image and other necessary software.

Install python-tk module:

sudo apt-get install python-tk

Install wiringPi, go to this link for instructions: http://wiringpi.com.

After installing wiringPi, download and install wiringARM:

wget http://forum.4dsystems.com.au/filedata/fetch?id=49703

Download and unzip the file HomeAutomation.zip.

After these steps, run the HomeAutomation.py:

sudo python /home/armadillo/ HomeAutomation /HomeAutomation.py

Demo

Flowchart