Eric of ElectronicHamsters wrote an article detailing his Uber home automation project: garage door sensor, battery powered mailbox sensor or door monitor, multi sensor, laundry room washer-dryer notifier, prototype of dog tracker, garage genie and remote control, smart mouse trap.
Project info at ElectronicHamsters project page.
Check out the project instructables here.
Just a few weeks ago I hit on an interesting metric relevant to this project: the temperature of the incoming water pipe line.
I was concerned about the feed line freezing like some other houses’ lines had after the longer than usual cold Canadian winter. So, I attached a DS18s20 temperature sensor to the incoming pipe with some tape.
It turned out that the lowest temperature I saw in the past month is 4C so I don’t have to worry about freezing much.
What was very interesting to me was the fast recovery time of the pipe’s temperature meant that the water flow times were obvious. I can tell the difference between a toilet flush, a shower, and a dishwasher by looking at the graph of temperature over time.
This setup cannot estimate volume, but it is surprisingly rich for such a simple monitor.
Albert.