The building blocks of my do it yourself home automation system (DIYHAS) consists of nine elements:

1. Adafruit.io host for dashboards, graphs, control buttons, data storage, etc.
2. Alexa interface through the Fauxmo server which emulates a Belkin switch
3. Mosquitto MQTT broker/bridge server handles local messaging and the bridge to Adafruit.io
4. Environment sensor servers measuring temperature, humidity, air pressure, gas concentration, air quality and light lux
5. Motion sensor servers for security applications and to activate or deactivate lights
6. Administration server to manage configurations and coordinate activities between servers
7. Alarm servers are an integral part of the security system, e.g., intruder alerts and fire alarms
8. Lighting control servers that are controlled by Alexa or motion sensor
9. iOS application to provide a mobile administration tool

Future posts will provide build instructions to create you own DIYHAS solution. The servers are all Raspberry Pi devices with applications written in Python 3 and the help from lots of great open source code. I’m planning to push all of my python source to github to coincide with posts.

Welcome to my new home automation project site!

For the past four years I’ve been in a self-taught program to learn python, Raspberry Pi administration, the Internet of Things and basic digital electronics. Its really been an immersed in prototyping, discovery and testing a variety of solutions with a steep learning curve. Its been a blast!

I’m ready to start version 2.0 of my do it yourself home automation system. Over the next  couple of months I will post entries on how to build a custom home automation system with security, environment monitoring, video surveillance, lighting controls, Alexa integration and more. Please stay tuned.