Friday 27 November 2015

Remote Controlled Dual Relays using FM Radio Modules

Remote control of pumps, heaters, lights and other appliances is often a requirement in Home Automation, Building Control or Automation of Industrial Control processes. Traditional radio modules can often disappoint by having poor range or being prone to interference. FM Radio Modules when compared to much cheaper AM modules gives superior performance in both these areas. This post is about a remote module that has two independent relays for remote switching ON and OFF of appliances.

Monday 19 October 2015

Remote Temperature Monitoring

This post shows how to use the Dual Analogue Radio Transmitter (DART) and the Universal Radio Receiver (URR) to monitor the temperature of one or more freezer.

Thursday 8 October 2015

Using the Dual Analogue Radio Transmitter (DART) and Universal Radio Receiver (URR) for Home Automation



When putting together a Home Automation System together it is often necessary to gather analogue data. This could be from temperature / humidity sensors or to measure battery voltage. Often these are remote to the computing module which could be a Raspberry Pi, and Arduino or a PC - for example when gathering data from a weather station on the roof of a building. 

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Connect 2 Custard Pi 3's to a Raspberry Pi and get 16 analogue inputs

The Custard Pi 3 plugs into the Raspberry Pi GPIO (A, B, B+ and 2) and provides 8 analogue inputs using the SPI bus. This post shows how you can connect 2 x Custard Pi 3 to a Raspberry Pi and get 16 inputs. (There is soldering required).

Monday 20 April 2015

GPIO projects for the Raspberry Pi

This blog post summarises a number of sample projects for the Raspberry Pi GPIO and provides links to detailed instructions with downloadable Python code. These are great for students and those wanting to interface the Raspberry Pi to the outside world.

Wednesday 21 January 2015

Using the Mains Switch Widget to switch 4 mains powered appliances

The other day I had the following query regarding the Mains Switch Widget. "I am looking into a project involving my Raspberry Pi I wish to complete which will allow me to automate the habitat of my Bearded Dragon's vivarium including temperature control and lighting. I am in need of some way to control the ON/OFF status of a few 240v devices which would usually plug into a standard, UK power outlet." Well - below are a couple of ways of doing this.