I know its been a while since the last post, Im semi-good at these blogs. I have a tendency to get started and then start working on things and then next thing I know its been 2 months...Ill have to do better....or have my ADHD looked at.....
When I last left off, I had closed Version 3 and started on Version 4. Version 4 will be the same base as 3, but with some major modifications.
1. All of the room nodes, will include temperature monitoring
2. Major room nodes have been reduced. Instead of a room having several small nodes or MCU(arduinos) the redesign has used one big MCU ( Arduino MEGA) running several lights/sensors per room.
3. MYSQL full integration. Tables broken down to include just the house, and another for the heating/cooling.
4. New script for check the online status of node, since the Pubsubclient doesnt have a way to use wills/testaments.
5. Dropped individual LCD screens for heating and cooling MCUs and now the nodes report status to the MQTT Broker. A Master MCU, subscribes to the topics, and provides a local display.
6. Looking into incorporating GhostEvents into the setup as a way to schedule events, as opposed to writing a lengthy trigger script I was using before.
7. Looking into ( I have downloaded and starting to configure) a software package called J.A.R.V.I.S, and as its name lends, its based on the Ironman AI Computer Jarvis from the movie. It has an excellent speech to text and voice recognition system, which will greatly reduce the workload,....if nothing else its fun to play with.
The major thing still is the web page design. For the initial testing phase, I simply used various tables set up and had real time data pushed to the tables. I want to totally depart from this. I have seen several good tutorials for using gauges, js, jqueryUI, and others that Im going to try.
I was able to get MYSQL connected to visual basic. I tinkered with going that direction, and making a visual basic windows form app, and just integrate into it what I wanted. When I started looking at adding graphical elements to visual basic, while some are excellent, very cool looking and not that hard to apply, when I saw the price tag for these my jaw dropped. Even for a non-commercial personal use, many started at 299 USD, thats simply not worth the ROI, since its just for me. So its back to using the webserver. This is totally fine with me. Id rather invest in hardware, that drop 300 dollars to make cool gauges on a VBapp.
Im still toying with the use of a full blown dashboard still, but that is going to require quite a bit of work. I have seen several example of these, and they are somewhat easier than I thought, so I might try.
Ok that about covers the last 10 weeks or so. I will start to blog on these parts in the coming weeks as time allows so stay tuned
Happy Coding!
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