Introduction: Armadillo Home Automation

By http://4dmakers.net/
About: 4D Makers is a group of curious engineers and enthusiasts who finds great satisfaction in creating and building anything from electronics.

The Home Automation project manages and operates various electrical systems inside a house such as lights, appliances and outlets. This project uses 4D Systems’ Armadillo-43T.

The project lets the user set the mode into manual or automatic. In manual mode, the user is able to turn on or off certain outlet or device. While in auto, the user can just set how much time until he wants to turn on or off all the devices connected. In this mode, the user is not able to toggle the devices manually but he can revert back to manual anytime. The user is given two modes for the automatic, ALL DEVICES ON and ALL DEVICES OFF. To trigger the relays that turns on and off the devices, the Armadillo utilizes it’s GPIO capabilities. When in manual mode and a button is detected to be pressed, the armadillo will toggle the respective GPIO pin. When in automatic, the armadillo will simply turn all pins to LOW or HIGH depending on the settings of the timer. The Armadillo is our solution to the display and prototyping demands. The Armadillo is runs on the BCM2835 SOC combined with the ARM1176JZF-S CPU Processor with a VideoCore IV GPU in a single package. The Armadillo is developed to utilize the Armadillian Operating System, which is largely based on Raspbian/Debian OS and optimised for the BCM2835 SOC. It is packed with 13 GPIO which has 2 Single I2C Channels, 5 Single SPI Channels and 2 UART Channels. 2 PWM channels are also available which is share with the on-board amplifier with mini-speaker. It also has a USB port which can be used for peripheral devices such as Keyboards, USB Hubs, Wi-Fi dongles and Bluetooth modules.

Step 1: How It Works?

Step 2: Build

Components

  1. ARMADILLO 43T
  2. 6-8 channel relay
  3. modified extension outlet
  4. 3 lights/lamps
  5. some appliances
  6. uSD Card

Software

  1. python-tk module

Steps

  1. Modify the extension outlet as shown in the first image above. Add wire extension from the open ended connection. These wires will be connected to the relay module. Schematic diagram of a modified extension outlet.
  2. Connect the components as shown in the second image above.
  3. Armadillo to Relay Module connection:

Pin1 (GPIO37) to In1

Pin2 (GPIO38) to In2

Pin3 (GPIO39) to In3

Pin4 (GPIO35) to In4

Pin5 (GPIO36) to In5

Pin6 (GPIO45) to In6

Pin9 (GND) to GND

Pin10 (+5V) to +5V

Connect the modified extension outlet’s extended wires to the relay module as shown in the second image above.

Step 3: Program

• Open the Armadillo-43T Datasheet and follow the instructions on how to install the Armadillian image and other necessary software.

• Install python-tk module

sudo apt-get install python-tk

• Install, wiringPi go to this link for instructions:

http://wiringpi.com

• After installing wiringPi, download and install wiringARM

wget http://forum.4dsystems.com.au/filedata/fetch?id=4...

• Download and unzip the file HomeAutomation.zip

• After these steps, run the HomeAutomation.py

sudo python /home/armadillo/ HomeAutomation /HomeAutomation.py

Step 4: Demo

Step 5: Flowchart