To be honest, this project will be done on a limited budget, using some existing equipment and building some of my own sensors. I have no budget for the big names in home automation (HA) and I’m mainly focused on things that aren’t your traditional HA components.

Since I’ve been a Microsoft developer for a great many years, any software used – written or not will be based primarily on MS tools.

Here are the main parts to the stated project:

1) A Graphical User Interface (GUI) – to display and allow a person to navigate through the various views of sensory data from throughout the home.

2) A Collector System (CS) – allowing various sensors and transducers report in via a push or pull process that is loosely coupled to the devices.

3) Configuration Database (CD) – that will tie Targets (items of interest such as a refrigerator, furnace, or swimming pool) to Measures (metrics like temperature, air-flow, electrical current, or humidity for example) and also allow thresholds and alarms to be tied to these combinations.

4) Event System (ES) – Will produce events based on event rules, targets, measures, and thresholds.

5) Data Warehouse (DW) – For storing measurement data for trend statistical analysis.

So, the key parts are a GUI, a Collector System, a Configuration Database, Eventing System, and Data Warehouse.

Next, I will try to formulate this into some type of project statement and a diagram of how the main components of the system.

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