Wiring

As I was working on the plans for the laundry room and found myself descending into the Arduino/Raspberry Pi/Bluetooth/Internet wormhole, I realized I needed to step back and think some about the general architecture of the house. And when I say architecture, I mean something much closer to "computer architecture" than "building architecture."

First, the main brains of the place will be in the study. There, I will have a computer (I'm thinking a desktop running Linux) that will be in charge of everything and will run the program that sends signals to all the other controllers throughout the house to tell them what they need to do. This program will communicate with the Universal Remote probably over the internet (though I haven't completely ruled out Bluetooth) to get its instructions, and it will probably be wired to an microcontroller with lots of GPIO, and that microcontroller is what will tell the other controllers what to do.

Then, I will need to find an electrician who's as mad as I am who will run wires through my house from the Brain to the peripherals. (Obviously, this will be done when the other wiring is done while the house is still under construction.) I am thinking this should only need to be one wire per peripheral, since everything in the house should be on the same ground, and I can use serial communication. I did a preliminary search of wire resistances, and I don't think I'll run into any problems there. I don't remember my transmission lines class very well (except that it's hard) but I'm pretty sure it only applies to AC, and all of this will be DC, so I'm happy with using wired communications.

Next, I have to decide what I want in each room. I think I will want the following four things in every room (with the possible exceptions of bathrooms and closets):

1. A motion sensor. I want to know if someone's in the room.

2. Automatic light switches. I want a manual override here, but I also want them to be able to be controlled by the computer, which will make decisions based on what setting it's in--either lights always on/off or responding the the motion sensor.

3. Speakers. Ideally, I'd like speakers in every room so that Pandora can just follow me around. This may be kind of tricky, and I might just decide to play Pandora on the Universal Remote (remember, it's a tablet or a phone) instead. I like music, but I'm not so much of an audiophile to really appreciate high quality versus okay quality speakers. But it would be cool if the must just automatically turned off when I left a room and turned on when I entered another.

4. Blinds. The Brain really should be able to automatically open the blinds in the morning and close them at night.

In addition to these basic things, the laundry room microcontroller and the kitchen microcontroller need to be able to communicate with the Brain. Also, it would be nice if the security system (presumably I will have one...I haven't thought about that yet...) could, as well.

Bottom line: The only thing that will need wireless communication is the Brain. Everything else will be wired. That probably makes life a lot easier...once I find an electrician...