HouseBot

Well,

Last night I ordered a testing kit from http://www.ananiahelectronics.com/RF8315RT-s.htm
I read somewhere else that they failed quite often, but I need to see for myself as well (and if the do, check if they can be 'fixed')
If anyone else is interested in this, I'll keep you guys updated on my testing.

The idea is that Housebot will keep track of me and my girlfriends presence,
shut down any equipment that's still on and go into alarm mode when we're not at home for more then 10 minutes.


LostDreamer

Could be interesting with many different applications like only ringing the phone in the room where you are present. However that would require a receiver in each room. I guess that would be the only solution since 14 meters can usually be devided by two or three to get the real range when walls etc are in place. Being able to determine who in in which room would have its benifits. You could even take a movie with you in a different room on the rooms monitor (something like the Bill Gates house). An alarm with motion sensors only brings you that far. It doesn't know what person is in the room.

For something like that you might also check this project:
http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archiv ... 12422.aspx

They have an open source version somewhere as well with a few adjustments.

You can get the keyfobs with 1 USB receiver for about 10-20 dollar.
I had a few over here as well, they work quite well and the signal hardly goes through the walls
so it would be precise enough for locating which room you are in.

LostDreamer

The USB receiver is required in every room. So some kind of USB network should be available which is pretty hard to do with lengths of up to 5 meters unless hubs are used. It brings new ideas though. Thanks

LostDreamer,

Please keep me posted,

I would love to use this to track if our cars are in or out of the house!!


Raptor

@ Richard: Don't forget USB - CAT5 extenders
http://www.smartvm.com/USB-EXTENDER-VIA ... -P7243.htm

These can go for about 30m with stable USB2.0 signals and CAT5 is a lot easier to get through ceilings and underneith the floors.
Plugin a USB hub in a central spot in the home at every level and run shorter USB cables to each room you need them. It works wonders as long as you use local power adapters for the USB hubs.

@Raptor: No problem... I'll give you a pm when i recieve them

Well, I just recieved my package from Hong Kong with the active RFID set.
Just wanted to say, it's been very easy to set up in Housebot.

I took roussell's advice and started with the generic serial device instead of the VB demo app to create a real plugin, this was a real time saver.
This is how I set it up in Housebot:

1 Hardware interface - Generic Serial Module
2 Devices - RFID_Receiver (Serial Device) & RFID_Presence (Null device with a yes / no property for each RFID tag)

1 (timeout) timer and 2 tasks for each tag in the system.
When an ID is received, the timeout timer for that tag will be (re)triggered to run (10 seconds here for testing the stabillity) and when a timer hits 0, the presence of the tag will be set to No in the Null device.

I'll have this in testing for a few days to see if I get any blackouts and let you guys know how it goes.

LostDreamer

ps. attached is an export file for the interested

I finished the testing for now and wanted to share what I found so far.

It has a lot of missed heartbeat, but normally not more then 2-3x in a row.
The RFXcom receiver can jam this reciever (even if it is another frequentie).

I had a vbscript run continuously for a few days now to check when there was more then 6 seconds between 2 heartbeats.
The log it produced is attached. like I said, a lot of missed heartbeats in there but never for more then 20 seconds so it should be no problem.

The only time I got any problems is when I put it near my rfxcom 433mhz reciever, I had a lot of missed heartbeats and flatlines up to 80 seconds.
After that I put in a better antenna and 1 meter space and it has been working perfectly since...

For me, the testing is now done, I'm going to buy more tags next week.


LostDreamer