blog/data/2013-02-10-tellstick-morning.txt

   1 Title: Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids
   2 Tags: english
   3 Date: 2013-02-10 12:50
   4
   5 <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
   6
   7 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
   8 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
   9 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
  10 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
  11 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
  12 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
  13 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
  14 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
  15 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
  16 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
  17 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
  18
  19 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
  20 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
  21 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
  22 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
  23 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
  24 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
  25 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
  26 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
  27 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
  28 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
  29 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
  30 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
  31 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
  32 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
  33 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
  34 ones own
  35 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
  36 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
  37 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
  38 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
  39 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
  40 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
  41 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
  42 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
  43 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
  44 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
  45 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
  46
  47 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
  48 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
  49 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
  50 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
  51 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
  52 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
  53
  54 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
  55 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
  56 can also delay it if we want to.</p>