1.3 DIY Solutions

The Do-It-Yourself category in home automation is more active today than ever before. The combination of inexpensive electronics with low-cost networked computers make this option extremely attractive. There’s other reasons that make DIY an ideal pursuit. Unlike proprietary commercial offerings, the projects you build are not mysterious black boxes. You have the source code. You have the knowledge. You have the measurements, the metrics, and the methods.

Not only will you know how to build it, you will know how to troubleshoot, repair, and enhance. None of the commercial solutions can match exactly what you may need. Home automation vendors have to generalize their products to make them appeal to a large consumer base. By doing so, they don’t have the luxury of creating one-off solutions that exactly match one customer’s specific needs. But with some rudimentary knowledge and project construction experience, you’ll gain the confidence to create whatever design matches your situation.

For example, the first project in this book builds a sump pit notifier that emails you when water levels exceed a certain threshold. While commercial systems have audible alarms, none that I have found at the local hardware store have the means to contact you via such messaging. And should you need to modify the design (add a bright flashing LED to visually broadcast the alert, for example), you don’t need to purchase a whole new commercial product that includes this feature.

Walk around your house. Look for inefficiencies and repetitive tasks that drive you crazy the way George Bailey was with pulling off the loose finial on his staircase’s newel post. Take note of what can be improved with a little ingenuity and automation. You may be surprised at just how many ideas you can quickly come up with.