We've taken a temporary detour, learning electronics basics. The plan is to have the most efficient solar DC system with all kinds of hifalutin' technology.
Ideally we only want one or two AC outlets, and the rest will be DC, including a Bluetooth-steaming audio system and speakers so we can stream music from our phones, power our tablets to play movies, and run the LED lighting with a variety of programs the control when certain lights are on or off and their brightness levels. We've taken two courses: Intro to Electronics and Intro to Arduinos. An Arduino is an open-source microcontroller that is programmed using C++. Here's some good info: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino and here's a video introduction:
One of the major applications that a lot of people are using it for is making their own home monitoring systems, including key fob or phone app operated door locks, being able to see security camera video remotely in real-time on your phone or tablet and alarm systems. We'll use it to control our lighting programs, and possibly enable our phones to be remotes for our audio/video system, similar to your TV remote. Cool, huh?
One of the major applications that a lot of people are using it for is making their own home monitoring systems, including key fob or phone app operated door locks, being able to see security camera video remotely in real-time on your phone or tablet and alarm systems. We'll use it to control our lighting programs, and possibly enable our phones to be remotes for our audio/video system, similar to your TV remote. Cool, huh?
Jason got me a cool kid's electronics kit that we've been getting some of the basics on:
Today we finished our first test project soldering components to a PCB. It's a Photo Sensor that turns on and off with light levels. Below is the video of it in action, and you can see that our dining room is so dark that we'll need to tweak the sensitivity potentiometer, but the nice thing it that you can actually see it in action. We can connect it to lighting (like a nightlight or porch light) to automatically turn them on and off. Here's a short video:
Anyway, you can see how much cool stuff we get to play around with. At first I thought Jason was crazy wanting to do this, but now I'm loving all the stuff I'm learning. And I'm getting all kinds of cool ideas for things to do in the house. I REALLY want to be able to lock the doors to our house from my keychain or phone.
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