[vox] Home automation/Physical security

[Bill Broadley]

Greetings all,

After the great responses to my UAV related queries I figured I'd try 
again with another somewhat linux related area.

What are people doing for home automation/physical security?

I've done some research, but haven't actually built anything yet.  I 
dislike X10 because it's unreliable and not particularly secure.  I 
wouldn't for instance want to control my front door or garage door with it.

The number of home thefts in Davis has been pretty high as well, it was 
1-2 a day for a few months starting till they nabbed on guy.  I've had 2 
homes and a car broken into within a 100 yards of my house in the last 6 
months or so.

One cool product I found was an Axis M1054, seems ideal for a front 
door.  Allows video + 2 way audio so you can answer the door from 
anywhere with a network connection.  I do need a metal box to protect, 
I'm trying to track down a source for:
http://eholovision.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=226&Itemid=264

The axis cameras aren't cheap, but they do seem to have better video 
quality, tons of functionality, stream well, and many cool features like 
motion detection, knock detection etc.  They run linux and *gasp* allow 
user customizations.

I also wanted to:
* monitor temperature sensors for inside, outside, and attic.  Maybe
   even soil moisture.
* control a few relays for attic->outside fan, house -> attic fan,
   and maybe a watering system.
* monitor the state of a few door/window sensors to know when the
   garage door is open and the like
* Have a small tablet/old phone/small 2x20 display with a speaker/buzzer
   for messages like "warning garage door has been open for more than
   10 minutes", "Someone is walking towards your front door", "the mail
   is here".

Products that would enable the above:

Cool arm, arduino, and wifi widget (available sept or so) good for 
monitoring analog sensors (like temp/moisture) and digital (like doors). 
  Even allows updating the arduino over the network.  I definitely don't 
want to be crawling around in my attic or crawlspace to update software.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sparkdevices/spark-core-wi-fi-for-everything-arduino-compatible
http://www.sparkdevices.com/

Similar but more expensive SBC, MANY sensors available:
http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?category=21&product_id=1073_0

Nice magnetic switch:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009SUF08

Soil moisture sensor:
http://dx.com/p/fc-28-d-soil-hygrometer-detection-module-soil-moisture-sensor-blue-184234

Nice relays:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0057OC5O8

The raspberry Pi didn't seem to be a particularly good fit.  Wifi 
requires a dongle, no build in analog pins.  I wanted to keep the 
hardware hacking to a minimum.

With all of the above I was hoping to enable things like:
* sounding a buzzer if a door is open too long or when it shouldn't
   be.
* in cool mode turn on attic fan as soon as outside air is cooler
   than attic.  Turn on house -> attic fan as soon as outside cooler
   than inside
* turn on water only when the soil is too dry.
* Open the garage door when I'm home.

Anyone doing something interesting in this space?