kd5crs11 wrote:I love this thread, and I've been waiting until I have something cool enough to post. Today I think I do:
I took two Harbour Freight Pressure Sensitive Mats (
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=96481), cut the alarm off, and hooked them to two DS10As. (That part of the idea came from someone in the Cocoontech forum.)
I then put one pad under the mattress on my side of the bed, and one on my wife's side of the bed. The mattress alone is a diffuse enough weight not to trigger the contact closure, but is enough when a person lays down on it.
Indigo then does a little dance with the variables, and when both DS10a's show closed for 5 minutes, it shuts off the bedroom light. As the parent of a 2 year old (with Legos) I've found that the topography of the floor is constantly variable, and it is really nice to see where you are walking all the way to the bed.
What makes this cooler than a remote by the bed, you ask? Well, if one person gets up in the middle of the night, Indigo turns on the bathroom light to 50%. Once both people are in bed again it turns it off. No fiddling around for remotes at 2am.
Further uses for a "people are in bed" sensor are left to the reader. :+D
(Total cost for two pressure sensitive mats and 2 DS10a's is about $25, so this one doesn't break the bank.)
Brian
That's extremely cool! I'll toss in one of my projects that I did last week while on "vacation":
We have a hot water recirculating system in our house so that we have instant hot water. The trouble is that keeping it running 24x7, while not costing much in electricity, was causing our copper pipes to degrade at an accelerated rate. Since we built the house 6 years ago, we've had 3 hot water pipe leaks, all most likely caused by buildup in the pipes. Our water is pretty hard but nobody else in our neighborhood that we've spoken to have this problem, and none of them have a recirc system. I'm thinking that the recirc system, if not solely responsible, is causing pipe damage quicker.
So, I've installed a togglelinc so that we can turn it on/off at need. I set up a t/d action that turns it on at 7:30am and leaves it on for 2 hours during the week (we have a pretty predictable weekday schedule - everyone showers in the morning and that's the most important time to have instant hot water). There are a few problems though:
1) when we have company, showers are less predictable
2) weekends are far less predictable
To solve #1, I modified a script that I already have running that does special stuff when my houseMode variable is set to "company" and changed to something else - i just modified that script to turn the pump on/off as appropriate. Sure, the pump will run 24x7 while we have company, but that doesn't happen that often.
To solve #2, I installed SwitchLincs in the bathrooms on the lights, and when Indigo sees an instant on (double tap on), it turns on the recirc pump for 30 minutes. Also, an instant off also turns off the pump. This will require a little thought/practice to use, but I think it's probably the best way of handling it.
I also have a keypadlinc button linked to it so we can turn it on/off without having to go into the hot water heater closet where the switch is to turn it on/off.
All this stuff will end up in a wiki post at some point - I suspect that while there may not be an exact match, the theory is useful for other situations.