Open Home Control: New home automation hardware project

Many open source home automation projects have relied on driving proprietary devices, but the newly created Open Home Control project aims to change that by creating a framework for hardware devices that can be integrated with open sourced home automation platforms such as the respected openHAB software.

The home automation system will provide a framework for creating a large network of different devices that offer AES-256 data encryption and can resend data packets when transmission is disrupted. Devices in the network will use Atmel microcontrollers such as the ATMega168 in combination with HopeRF wireless transceivers on 868MHz. Firmware for the system is developed in C and compiled with the GCC compiler. WinAVR is the chosen development environment, although compiling under Linux also appears to be possible. Design guidelines on the site give further information about the hardware and firmware.

The project is still young, but a handful devices are already available: a base station to act as a master control for the OHC network, a temperature and humidity sensor, a remotely switchable power socket, and a dimmer designed to work with specialised Osram fluorescent tube power supplies. The number of available devices is set to increase along with the growing community of contributors the project hopes to attract.

The project's software is available from its GitHub repository and is licensed under the GPLv3. Hardware and schematics are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-SA 3.0) licence.

(sno)