Hackspace Instrumentation

Template:Clean Up Our always-on little server Holly will be used to collect data from the HackSpace and provide a number of interfaces for the presentation of that data. This will be for "the things we want to know about" and various interesting statistics. The end-data, or a subset thereof, should really be published to pachube to contribute to the Internet of Things. Internally we should be using MQTT to communicate between nodes.

• door contacts
  • main door on black and white core --Lwk 21:41, 2 March 2011 (GMT)
  • We'll want to do the main HackSpace door first
  • I got a nice reed-magnet contact switch from expolinkalarms.co.uk on ebay for £1.65
  • I taped it next to the door to install next weds Michael Erskine 13:21, 10 February 2011 (GMT)
  • I brought in some Tyco 6-core alarm cable - there's lots of this in my free-issue cable store.
  • RepRap Matt has now installed the switch and run 6-core alarm cable over to Holly.
• temperature
• light level
• PIR
• dance-mat floor pressure switch (!)
  • I have one in the store room
  • it might be useful to use it on the floor just inside the store room
• RFID reader fun
• fingerprint readers! I have left two in the store room
• webcams - naturally!
• HAL 9000 [1] eye with webcam showing the spooky view!
• GERTY from Moon [2] - a cheap colour LCD for the smiley face and what-have-you for the rest.

I have started to map out The_Space with http://sourceforge.net/projects/sweethome3d/

PC I/O

• serial and parallel ports available
• USB ports available
• we could arduino it if we want

PC storage and user interfaces

• Added "instrumentation" account on holly (uid=1005)
• RRD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRDtool
• syslog?
• IRC bot would be entirely appropriate
• web interface of course!
• hook into the website
• daily summary as RSS feed
• everybody loves graphs!

Michael Erskine 13:21, 10 February 2011 (GMT)

Crazy Cool Mobile Phone Hack

Every wanted to phone a server and tell it to do something? Or perhaps have the server phone or text you when something happens!

Inspired by some crazy phone hacks on Instructables, I'd like to involve some old mobile phones to act as inputs/outputs. I've started a page on my vebug.com webpage at [3] and I'll transcribe it here.

Michael Erskine 09:33, 15 February 2011 (GMT)