432 MHz wireless sensors and power outlets for home automation using Arduino

Home automation becomes more and more popular, affordable  and fascinates people. Internet offers such possibilities as never before. Impress your friends showing on Iphone that you can switch on/off lamp in your apartment 1000 km away and simultaneously see it through a webcam.

Wirelessly controlled  power outlets are best suited for switching on/off appliances as they do not need cables  and only the remote control needs to be interfaced to a microcontroller. Design is electric -shock -safe as the high voltage modules are not opened.
Arduino microcontroller greatly simplifies the task, because it is a standard board that can be easily reprogrammed. Arduino could be connected to a PC, WiFi  router with USB running OpenWRT, or direct connection to Internet could be done via Arduino Ethernet shield.

Picture below illustrates how home automation box  could look.  There are external sensors attached to Arduino, PIR, photodiode, sound level monitor, 1-wire temperature sensors DS18B20

The first attached pdf file contains details how to program Arduino for steering the wireless power sockets.

Second pdf file describes how to connect sensors and relays.

Comments

[lentildude]

I am a Arduino newbie so pls go easy, question, in the pdf that has the decoded binary strings, ie the PIR transmitter binary stream. Can you use rcswitch libraries to capture and action some code. Is there some examples somewhere? I only see these pdfs on instructables. Any more info on creating a program that can capture a pir and action code and also be able to store event with time stamp in a database in EEPROM and display/scroll on an lcd would be cool. thnx

[janisalnis]

Thanks for interesting idea to save activity events locally on Arduino.
Arduino does not have real time clock. Solution is to use Arduino RTC shield or to program software clock that you set up every time you power Arduino up.

This was my first try to decode codes. So I used brute force method.
First looked on oscilloscope and then coded the expected pulse length sequence into arduino. Well, you can use arduino itself instead of oscilloscope to measure pulse lengths and sent measurements to PC via serial.

[Saxtus]

Can I control those rev.biz power outlets using a RFXCOM RFXtrx433 USB transceiver?

[janisalnis]

Thanks for goot tip! Did not know about this transmitter.

It is nice idea to have a separate transmitter. Then one does not need to open remote control and solder wires.

I know only cheap 433 MHz boards for 5 ca USD.

I think if you can get the sequence out that is necessary then transmitter does not matter. If the carier frequency is the same. It is simple amplitude modulation. Just on or off.
May be you can ask the manufacturer.
The oscilloscope trace that is necessar5y to reproduce is in the instructable.

I am working on a C programm to use USB to serial adapter with CP2102 chip to direct control one of the pin instead of Arduino.

[Saxtus]

Unfortunately after I bought the RFXtrx433 USB transceiver I've realized that it's made to ignore any signals that aren't in it's compatibility list, at firmware level, so it doesn't work with those outlets.

[Saxtus]

This one is a transceiver, supposedly, except transmitting, it can also read the sequence off the original remote control.

The thing is: Does it need to be encoded in a specific way?
Maybe rev power outlets are X10 compatible by default? Or doesn't matter at all...

I don't want to buy the transceiver only to find out that it's not compatible...

[dorcari]

Interesting....but it would be nice to have all of the info of the PDF in the instructable itself.

[janisalnis]

single file is easier to update