--- /dev/null
+Title: Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids
+Tags: english
+Date: 2013-02-10 11:00
+
+<p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
+
+<p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
+during the night and wake up when it is morning. I mean, when I
+believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier. In our household we
+have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
+sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day. They have adapted
+quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
+up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
+the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
+And it is perfectly understandable that they fail to sleep until 07:00
+some times. There is no way for them to know if it is before or after
+the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
+
+<p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem. It
+involve home automation. A few years ago I bought a
+<ahref="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
+switches at the Clas Ohlson shop, allowing me to control lights and
+other electrical gadgets using my Linux server. When I moved from the
+old flat to a small house, I put away all this equipment as most of
+the lighting in the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy
+to connect to the gadgets I had. But recently I bought a
+<ahref="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
+Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
+sockets. I want to take control ovens in the basement to avoid
+freezing the piping, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding. The
+default setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web
+service, which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to
+build ones own
+<ahref="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
+with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
+company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
+code. I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
+important. But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
+the kids came to me yesterday. We can set up a night light controlled
+by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00. The kids can
+then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
+get up or not.</p>
+
+<p>We tested this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until after
+07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the "morning
+light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had arrived. So
+this look like a success, and I am excited to see how this develops
+the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us all to sleep a
+bit longer in the morning.</p>