[Q] Home Automation, security using old android phone - General Questions and Answers

Hello,
First, I’m not an expert on logic controllers, or PLC stuff, just getting my feet wet for a home DYI project.
I have an idea for using my old android phone for a home automation type project.
First project I would like to try is a security ip camera, (that’s the easy enough), however I would like to also use the phone for certain outputs remotely. Like controlling my garage door opener. . Basically I would mount my old phone in my garage, so I can log into the ip camera, see if my garage door is open or closed, then I could remotely close using my current phone or PC from work or other location. The tricky part is how to use my old phone as a bridge to control a relay board. I know there are wifi, and Bluetooth relay boards out there, but they are smart boards and I want my old phone “smart” part of the equation.
If successful, I would eventually like to automate the process using the camera seeing the door open and closing automatically after a set amount of time.
My end goal is to turn an old smart phone into a home automation and or security hub. I thought about building a weather proof secure enclosure, mounting outside a business or home, then people could use the touch screen to unlock doors either using facial recognition or pass code, and the phones front facing camera could take a picture of the person interfacing with it, or even a two way communication for access. Many possibilities, but my limited knowledge of what hardware is need for controlling locks, switches and so forth is slowing me down.
Any help or ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks
Semper Fidelis

Related

Garage Door Opener - G1

Hey guys, I found this http://brad.livejournal.com/2397080.html and I was wondering if anyone has done it yet? and how is it working? Looks pretty cool, I think im going to give it a shot.
You do understand this is for a proprietary home automation system and not a traditional opener right?
@MomentaryLapse:
Yeah first you need a garage door opener with a web server! Is that a standard feature these days? I don't have a garage right now...
That said, this same process (Detect/Connect to a pre-determined WiFi network and automatically load a URL or run some other process) could easily be re-used for a variety of other functions using FOSS home auto software such as MisterHouse.
For example you could have it turn on an X10/Insteon switch (turn on the lights as you approach the house?).
Or configure a music player in your house to play "Hail To The Chief" as you walk in the door....which is such an awesome idea, I'm going home to work on it right now!
You may even be able to do the opposite...that is once the pre-determined WiFi AP is out of range, connect via EDGE/3G and launch a URL... Plug the iron into an Insteon appliance module and then you don't have to worry about whether you remembered to unplug it.
You could potentially also use location-specific triggers (does locale already do that?) or perhaps triggers upon discovery of bluetooth beacon.
Just throwing out some ideas for potential extensions of this concept that might not seem all that useful at a glance.
oh... I thought it was for an average opener.. nvrm

[Q] Android device cluster, networking or screen sharing

In short: Is it possible to cluster, network or push device output from one device to another, share storage devices and network/gps interfaces?
The long version: I have been wanting to build an in-car device that would store media and act as a gps and what not, but haven't found a way that I want to implement it yet. I was thinking if I found a x86 port of android, got most of the voice stuff working, I could have a headless device that I could store music on and use as navigation. I know the phones are capable of that, but if I want to keep say 500 gb of music on me, how does one do that?
My thoughts were if it were possible to either cluster or network an installed android powered unit to an android powered phone, I could always have network access from the unit in the car and share the gps from the phone, or have the phone access the storage from the device (not through dlna, but the music app seeing it as physical storage) and allow me to push the output from the in car device to the phone and let me interact with the system how ever I need to I could accomplish a form of in-car entertainment.
I figured that there could be apps written that would let the in-car device act as a headless unit, with its only interface being audio, it could store navigation directions/maps and what not, so if I didn't have the phone that day, I could still navigate to where I needed to. The phone and the device could constantly be in communication with each other if the car was parked by a wifi hotspot or something, so if I chose to navigate somewhere when I was at home, the car would already have the directions. I could also have it pull any media changes through wifi, and always have an updated media library.
I know the phones are fully capable of doing this, but for most of it, you have to have a window holster for the car to use the gps, and wires running for audio and charging and what not, but if there were a way that the in-car device could be hardwired to the audio system and left alone, the phone could stay in my pocked, be linked via bluetooth and I could have a small button-pad or something that would allow me to initiate google voice search, control the media player and interact with navigation. The whole thing with linking the phone and device together would be so the mobile network could be shared between android devices and the incar device could pull the information it needed. The thought of the display sharing was in case I needed to interact with the incar device.
I know what I am going on about is specific to me, but my thoughts behind it were if it were possible to do at least the network sharing (with out tethering or mobile hot spot blah blah blah) that android phone and tablet owners could do the same thing. They could share their mobile network through their tablet and have a tablet that would be always connected, would share mailboxes with the phone and basically act the way the Blackberry playbook is proposed or how the Palm Foleo was supposed to work. If the devices had a network ability of some level, the tablet could pull text messages, email messages, contacts or any other sync-able item.. That way, this wouldn't just be done for my benefit, but it would take tablet and phone owners to another league. Two devices that share the same information from one source and don't have to sync with the same servers twice. It would take a lot of redundancy out.
I hope you guys can see usefulness in my idea, and can shed some light for me.
Sorry from bringing this back from the dead, but since I never got any responses I'll add a bit more..
Does android have anything that would work like blackberry bridge between two android devices?
Droid Vnc server and androidvnc works fine for screen sharing. What I really like is the hpc aspects to CPU cycle sharing over wifi/nfc. Really interesting possibilities.
What I am looking for is to have the ability to use two separate android devices, but have them communicate via wifi/bluetooth or what ever and act as the same device in the sense that when the device with the data plan gets a text message or phone call, the notification goes through the other device that would be physically docked to audio equipment or what ever...
I have a Droid X, Droid Incredible, Droid Pro and a first gen Droid laying around.. Currently the Droid Pro is my in use phone.. The rest are just laying here. I want to be able to dock one of the others in my car, turn the GPS on, link it to my droid pro and have the other phone use the droid pro's active data connection for guidance/searches etc, and it would be docked to car audio, so it would need to access the pro's sd card, and have access to the pro's phone audio, or the ability to route calls from the pro to the other device via bluetooth or whatever, not by call forwarding.. This way it would be a sort of infotainment/telematics system..
Think of the possibilities this would open up for android tablets etc. If You could reply to text messages from your tablet because the tablet is linked/bridged to the phone in your pocket... That would make these tablet/laptop combos more appealing because it would the perfect convergence between tablet and phone.
Oh, and I guess, the other thing is that I have multiple cars, so one device would go in each car, and then when I got in the car, the one in that car would link with my phone, and everything would be the same, car to car, or device to device...
I guess another way to bump this:
Would it be possible for an app to do ADB to ADB via bluetooth or something, because then an app could be written like pdanet that would allow the network to be shared at least?
I dont remember the name of the app I think the name of it is Dashboard? and it will store/push all texts/emails etc. to every device u have dashboard installed on...Best buy has an app kinda like that too...Like the Idea of the screen sharing is that kinda like remote desktop/control?
I just search how to neywork cluster android came across your post ..... if you use the Google apps like Google play music/maps as well Google hangouts since with Google voice you can easily do what you want with out the need for both devices being together you can upload 50000 songs 9n play music for free and any device with ur hangouts and voice will receive ur calls and email notifications .....just need to make sure have Internet

[q] question : Android-pc bridge project for home automation

Hi there
I'm embarking on an ambitious project and i was wondering if anyone could help me by giving suggestions.
I am making my own home automation system, and I already have the necessary hardware to get it up and running, but I want to take it a step farther.
I have this (Use google translate lol) http://cba.sakura.ne.jp/kit01/kit_399.htm kit, which is basically a set of 8 relay switches that can be used to turn on and off mains devices (such as lights, powerpoints, ect) that are controlled by a computer through a DB25 printer port. I also have an old Dell D600 laptop that has said printer port, and the software needed to drive the circuit board. This is all well and good, as everything is working so far, but before I bother to install this thing in my roof and hook it up to control my lights, power points, ect, I was wondering if there is a way to use my android phone (HTC Legend, unrooted ) or tablet (Motorola xoom wifi rooted with Tiamat, o/c to 1.7ghz) to control this board through a computer.
I already have a client that remote controls the computer (splashtop remote), and I can achieve this with some difficulty by remote controlling the computer and using the PC software through my phone/tablet, but I was wondering if there is an android home automation program and its PC client service that supports DB25 printer port pinout settings, so I could directly control the circuit board through the app, like the leading home automation apps already available (minus the extremely expensive proprietary hardware that you need with them). If not, has anyone else considered developing one? If anyone could give me any help on this it would be greatly appreciated.

[Q] Controlling Power Point or Keynote with smartphone.

Hope this is the right place for this.
I know there are tons of apps out there that does this but here is my situation.
I am in a public speaking class and it would be really nice and easy for me and other students if we could control our slides from our phones or tablets.
My question is what would be the best way to do this on a school computer. I can install apps no problem, but they get erased after the computer gets restarted due to a deep freeze program of some sort. So simply installing the server application before hand won't do.
Is there some sort of solution that has maybe a portable executable that one can run on their flash drive just for the time that they need to connect their device to the computer?
Both of the devices will be on the same network (one wired and one wireless).

Need to get RK3128 to show me data storage over USB

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Basically, this picture frame seems to be monitoring network traffic of any user-connected network. It then reports randomly sized encrypted payloads back to several different adups servers on every initial connect and on a random schedule thereafter. This wouldn't really be that suspicious, except that it's scanning for and attempting to connect to any Wifi network with a weak password and an Internet connection in the background. It will connect to any SSID using any number of dumb/weak passwords, I'm guessing from an internal table. If it doesn't get an Internet connection within 30 seconds, it moves on to the next network. All the while, the Android UI just insists that there's no network connection possible although it can see networks (likely because something in the background has stolen the radio). Additionally, it scans and connects to any insecure Bluetooth devices nearby, but I don't have a way to intercept its communications currently.
Skylight support immediately played quiet when asked how to access their device to assess the malware and "are talking to our senior developers to figure out a fix". The "senior developers" (I'm sure in China) also denied any possibility of getting inside the storage of this. I'm suspicious that they may have knowingly shipped this with malware, or added it after the fact and I would like to prove it. I split the frame open since I was pretty sure it would just be a generic board like a Pi inside, possibly with serial pads or other development options. However, I don't know what I'm looking at or if it will meet my goals. There are OTG-DP and OTG-DM pads next to the Micro-USB port, a USB-A port, a 5v barrel connector and a large number of unmarked pads around what appears to be an expansion ribbon connector spot.

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