About:
I've been thinking more and more about user friendly-ness and the need to simplify and prettyfy my inventions to make them more marketable in a
real world environment. This module is the result of that thinking process. On it's own, its a fully functional security system. It's got alarming
contacts, arm and disarm interfaces, 11 digital inputs, an optional computer serial interface, 2 normally open contacts, and it's all completely self contained in a small
tupper wear container. It works right out of the box and auto arms first thing when powered up, all you need to do is attach sensors to the door and
windows to be be monitored. It's not bloated with extra bells and whistles, basically it only reports sensor states and alarms when armed, so it's a rock
solid device that can safely be run for weeks at a time if need be.
Sensors:
Currently all the sensors I have in place are just lever switches mounted to doors. In an owned home I will use actual magnetic contact sensors, but for
now this is fine, and cheaper! I can tell if a door is open or closed.
Optional Server:
The Alarm2 module has an accompanying server application that can be run on a pc to receive the serially transmitted signals. When ever any thing is changed,
could be a sensor opening or closing, the alarm sounding, going from arm to disarm, anything, it's all sent to a serial port where the server interprets the
data and displays all the various module states in a graphical user interface as well as writting the values to a text document for other programs to have access to the
module's states as well. Also, the server reads from a different text document once every 5 seconds for input commands to issue to the module, like, arm, disarm,
sound the alarm, etc.
Android Application:
Now since the Alarm2's server application both reads from a text document and writes to a different text document, I can run an apache web application that parses these
text documents to host a web page giving me real time status updates and control from any mobile device. And with a little extra java scripting, I can get my android
to hide the URL bar, so even though it's running like a web page, it looks like a full blown app.
X10 Control
Using that same apache server, I can also control all the x10 modules in my home with the same web application. I already had the x10 firecracker, which is a small
transmitter about the size of a fig-newton that plugs into the serial port, which responds to breif serial instructions to control the appliance modules around the home.
I then wrote a tiny command line app I called x10ctl.exe
which takes run time parameters to issue commands to the attached firecracker. Now the web pages are written in php, and there is a php function for running programs,
so I was now easily able to control the firecracker from the web application by linking the various control buttons to the php program launching function call.
