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Pseudonymous maker “Kiu” has put his sensible house techniques below the management of a self-admittedly “over-engineered” modular RS-485 rack-mounted modular system — and has launched every little thing below an open supply license for anybody to observe together with their very own setups.
“My newest mission [is] a modular RS-485 multi-master RS-485 subrack house automation and management system,” Kiu explains of the KHA mission. “So now I’ve a 19″ rack stuffed with modular subrack modules or assemblies, and these are related to nodes I’ve scattered round my condo — nodes to light up my IKEA furnishings, nodes to drive relays for mains energy, I’ve infrared and RF [Radio-Frequency] modules to manage non-connected units.”
The system, although spectacular, is self-admittedly over-engineered. “I needed to have the engineering problem,” Kiu says of the ensuing design. “There are possible method higher options on the market, skilled or open supply. I did not discover the optimum answer for any of the issues I stumbled upon, but it surely was an fascinating journey to study stuff.”
The center of the system is a 19″ rackmount chassis with a rear backplane, into which the subrack modules — every its personal PCB with a connector on the rear — slot. There’s room for a variety of modules per primary unit, every of which has a entrance panel with totally different {hardware} relying on its function: easy buttons, rotary encoders, locking switches, seven-segment LED readouts, analog audio jacks, and extra.
The rack chassis hosts a number of application-specific modules, every of which features a {custom} entrance panel. (📷: Kiu)
Every node within the system is powered by a Microchip AVR64DD32 microcontroller, with inter-node communication going down over RS-485 communication carried over CAT6 or CAT7 Ethernet cable — together with energy, which means that distant nodes want solely a single cable to function. A push of a button on the primary rack can allow shelf lighting, management heating and air flow techniques, or — utilizing custom-built sensible sockets fitted with relays — management exterior non-smart mains-voltage units.
Kiu has printed the entire mission on GitHub below the Inventive Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported license, and for many who need to dig deep into its particulars has additionally launched a two-hour “lecture type” deep-dive into KHA — embedded above and out there on Kiu’s YouTube channel.
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