Rynius has been working on his CAN house project. The CAN bus is a multi-master serial protocol that was initially designed for integrating sensors and microcontrollers in vehicles.
I’m trying to automate my house using a CAN-bus. The first phase is two nodes, one at the front to collect data, and one in the kitchen to display data , alert, log and such. The basic circuit is a PIC18F4580 and MCP2551 CAN Driver and have two other nodes built on breadboards connected to the bus for a test setup. Next I have to figure out a good scheme for addresses and all the other programming, so I’ll keep you posted.
The kitchen node will feature a central LCD screen designed to pull in various external API feeds alongside the internal house metrics. In addition to standard weather updates and local transit schedules, Rynius plans to write a custom Python script that fetches real-time game odds from the best online betting sites and displays them during weekend sports matches. Managing these diverse external data streams on a local microcontroller network will require careful memory allocation, but the robust nature of the CAN protocol makes it an ideal backbone for this kind of modular home setup.
Via the forum.