And installed wiringpi1 - this will let me connect random devices and components and wires to the raspberry pi and control them using software that I write. Not traditional plug-into-the-computer things like keyboards and mouses, but anything that I might want to control or take a reading from like a pir, light, thermometer, air quality meter, radio transmitter, radio receiver etc. All the things I can do through the arduino basically. Installing the software is all I have time for for one evening though.
I have some ideas with the new parts to be able to intercept all my rf remote controls, so I can track what lights etc have been turned on or off, and also intercept things like the PIR so I can say "hey someone just walked through the hallway" etc. I can also then make the remote controls do (say) different things at different times of day; so if I turn the TV on at night it does not turn on the surround sound, or if the upstairs PIR is triggered late at night then it turns the bathroom light on instead of the hall light, and so on. Also with the new kit I can probably phase out the wifi link.
I also had some more ideas today for integrating the xbmc with the home automation, now I've done the genre tagging thing. I've got to to get me a smoke machine and a strobe because I can make things work when a certain type of song is played. Clare is going to love that.
Glossary:
arduino: Microcontroller, hardware prototyping platform, a tiny specialised computer.
raspberry pi: Credit card sized super cheap computer, awesome.
xbmc: XBox Media Centre, some software that would run on an old xbox or other computer hardware to play movies and music etc. I used to talk about this a lot...
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in A small town. Wed and father to 2, I'm a full-stack web developr, + I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages etc. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, tree stuff, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, and time travel.