One Hub to Rule Them All!

by anthony-ngu

3.4K854

Intro: One Hub to Rule Them All!

Home automation is a growing space and every device has it's own way to interact with it and your phone is starting to get cluttered with all the different applications for each company. The Open Smart Hub allows you combine them in one place, make new ones, and let your home handle itself based on your preferences automatically.

Imagine this you're sitting at home on your sofa and it gets way too warm due to the afternoon sun shining through your window. No need to get up, because your window begins to open by itself in order to cool it down. An hour later it starts to drizzle (a summer storm) but luckily your home hub knew that would happen and it closed your windows for you! That's just one example of what the Home Hub could do for you. The great thing about it is that you can add any device to be automated through the hub! Imagine automating your home lighting, water heaters, sprinklers, etc. based on your movement, usage, time of day, and weather. Your regular home can now become a smart home!

STEP 1: ​How Does It Work?

There are three components. The online-hub, local-hub, and devices.

  • The online hub lives in an Azure web app with WebSockets turned on.
  • The local hub connects to this online hub and runs on a local machine with Node.js. It will communicate to your devices through the internet or local network.
  • The devices are your smart home devices. They can be anything from a NEST thermostat, WeMo switches, SmartThings devices, or even your own self-made projects.

STEP 2: ​Get Started Using It!

4 Comments

MichiganDave 8 years ago

I just decided to 'follow' you as I am hopeful that you will create more 'ibles in the future. There is one comment that I need to add: it may be due to the fact that my eyes are old but the the illustration in Step 1 is too difficult for me to read. It has letters that are too small, and too faint. If a decision was reached to do this in this fashion kindly understand that not everyone has a young set of eyes thus excluding them. Perhaps there is a method open to me to change the size and/or color on my monitor, but if it exists then that is just one more aspect to this amazing computer machine that is far beyond my ken. Maybe, someday...

Thanks for sharing. I want to do something like this in my home so I shall save it to learn from it. I appreciate your diligent works.

loop 8 years ago

The hackster.io link is broken

anthony-ngu 8 years ago

Thanks for the heads up, it's been fixed.

amberrayh 8 years ago

This is cool. Thanks for sharing your home automation system with us. I hope we see more from you in the future!