Your thoughts about a custom wireless Elk monitor screen?

midian

Member
Hi all. I am currently working on a custom electronics project and would love your feedback and feature ideas. In short, I have always wished that my Elk system had a prominent information screen so that I could easily see system state, messages, and other critical information quickly and easily. Most importantly, I want to see this information at night and in the dark from across the room. Thus, I started working on a project to hopefully accomplish these goals and more.

To start with, I obtained some 8in x 2.5 in Vacuum Florescent Displays that are very bright, readable in the dark, and large enough to be viewable from a distance. The displays are made up of dots, so they can do basic graphics and such too. Next, I added a serial over USB interface and wrote a driver program that connects to the elk Ethernet expander and scrolls status messages and such out to the screen. Here is a pictures of the screen driven off the microprocessor:

DSC00517.JPG


For those electronics types, I am using Atmel 8 bit microprocessors and bit-banging the multiplexed columns at > 60 hertz. My wife was kind enough to find me a project box at the local craft store to put the prototype in too. It is still an unfinished box and purely a prototype but you get the idea of what it will look like:

DSC00518.JPG


No, the multimeter in the background is not part of the project :). Any way, as fun and useful as this information functionality is, I quickly let the project scope creep to include a Zigbee wireless interface. I am working on a Zibbee transmitter that will attach to a serial expander inside the main Elk panel. Then, you can attach as many wireless receiver units to it as you might want. My wife loves the idea of being able to put a status display panel next to the bed so she can quickly check to ensure the system is armed, doors are closed, etc, all without getting out of bed.

So, right now I am still working out the Zigbee interface to complete making this wireless. However, I am wondering what other useful things I might be able to do with this project? Unfortunately, I choose pretty high-end parts and the costs have gone past “weekend project” into the realm of “it better do something darn useful or my wife is going to be vengeful”. Any ideas as to other useful things I might make this project do? What kind of information would you wish to see scrolled across the screen? Thanks for any feedback or suggestions!
 
This looks very cool, can't wait to see what's next :) As for what else you can do ... I always hoped someone would build an Arduino based project, with a ZigBee interface, so it can display live data from the Brultech ECM whole house current monitor. Some of their units support ZigBee (their USB ZigBee adapter shows up as a regular COM port in XP), so having a wireless display which can show the Elk M1 status info and ECM data would be pretty useful IMO.

I would also try to make it so someone can send custom messages to these displays using the Elk M1 ASCII feature (e.g., any string starting with "zb|").

Keep us posted!
 
I am using Atmel 8 bit microprocessors and bit-banging the multiplexed columns at > 60 hertz
Are you using a particular Atmel development board? And running Linux?

a serial over USB interface and wrote a driver program that connects to the elk Ethernet expander
Please say more about this. A wired Ethernet connection interfaces with USB, how? This is native USB on the Atmel board?

Right now I am still working out the Zigbee interface to complete making this wireless.
No Zigbee here. Will you maintain the IP connection design, and share the details?
 
This looks very cool, can't wait to see what's next :) As for what else you can do ... I always hoped someone would build an Arduino based project, with a ZigBee interface, so it can display live data from the Brultech ECM whole house current monitor. Some of their units support ZigBee (their USB ZigBee adapter shows up as a regular COM port in XP), so having a wireless display which can show the Elk M1 status info and ECM data would be pretty useful IMO.
I would also try to make it so someone can send custom messages to these displays using the Elk M1 ASCII feature (e.g., any string starting with "zb|").

Thanks for the suggestions. At the moment:
* Elk status and text messages both scroll as they are received
* The unit is RS232 compatible meaning you can indeed write out your own custom messages with a task as long as you use a specific syntax

Oh, this is not an "Arduino", but an Arduino is nothing more than a Atmega168 chip with some common hardware and an easy to use software interface. Any way, if you are a fan of the Arduino, avr-gcc under Eclipse or AVR Studio is really not that much more difficult. Plus, avr-gcc can be used with a simulator and a debugger where as the Arduino cannot. This project would never have been possible without using a simulator.

To answer Lagerhead as well, no, I don't use any particular development board. I use a AVRMKII ISP (In-System Programmer) to burn the code write to the hardware. Eventually, I will add a bootloader and and Serial/SPI functionality so that firmware can be uploaded remotely. Though, for now, most of my project is still on a breadboard because I keep changing it so much :D. Once I finish the major work, I will construct a PCB prototype.

And running Linux?
Yes, of course. I develop under Ubuntu and servers run OpenSuse.

Please say more about this. A wired Ethernet connection interfaces with USB, how? This is native USB on the Atmel board?
This is far simpler than it sounds. There are two parts, a software driver, currently in Python, that opens the RS232 connection to the Ethernet expander. The driver then sends the messages to the display over USB-serial to the Atmega UART (I am reserving SPI for the Zigbee communications).

No Zigbee here. Will you maintain the IP connection design, and share the details?
Sure. At the moment I am using Digi Xbee because it is easy. http://www.digi.com/products/wireless/poin...ies1-module.jsp

However, I am not an enormous fan of Xbee and am in the process of checking out the Atmel AT86RF230. So far, the AT86RF230 has been a royal PITA, but it would be very beneficial overall to get this working as desired.

Thanks again for the feedback and comments. I will update this thread as the project progresses.
 
neat. i use my slimp3/squeezeboxes the same way. what's your project cost so far?

I don't really know the costs yet because I had some of the parts and purchased others. Though, the significant costs are the displays, wireless components, and pcb printing. For example, normally, VFD's are very expensive at $70-$100 just for the display. However, I bought 100 of them that were surplus from a NCR production run. From there, the other major costs are the Zigbee wireless components. I find this ironic since the whole point of Zigbee was supposed to be low-cost, low-power devices that could be put everything from toasters to milk cartons. None the less, Xbee modules run $19 just for a single chip. The Atmel are less expensive, but require a lot more parts, engineering, and work to do right. Those two components aside, all the other parts are very cheap. Beyond that, I have invested a lot of hours of work into this as well.

I started this project with the hope of developing a low-cost wireless mesh-networked line of slick 3rd party components compatible with RS232 and of course the Elk. I love some of the great 3rd party products out there today. However, I think it is time to modernize a bit and offer technologies like high-speed encrypted mesh wireless, touch sensors, embedded AI, and modern interfaces into the home automation landscape. Any way, I will wait a bit and see how successful the end product is and then add up the costs. Costs are nothing but losses if the project does not have a successful completion :)

Edited to Add: damage, I noticed from your blog that you are a hardware guy too. I did not mean to be too shallow with details. If there is anything more specific you wish to know, ask away.
 
We need a full Zigbee system which supports all devices from keypads as routers to door and window contacts as end devices plus all the products in between.

If you get that capability, give me a call!! :)
 
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