There’s nothing quite as delectable for your next home automation project as Raspberry Pi.  If you’ve been living under a rock and are unfamiliar with this amazing little device, it is essentially a hobbyist’s dream.  It is a small, embeddable computer that costs around $30.  Projects with it range from making remote controlled Lego robots, to putting one in space.  For physical computing and automating your home, it is a great form-factor, and there are a plethora of projects to choose from.  You are really only limited by your creativity.  Some example projects I’ve been investigating:

• Automating your home sprinkler system so that it adjusts the schedule depending on the weather
• Wiring up your own Nest-like thermostat controller
• Controlling your garage door with Siri

This last one was a good use case for me, as we had just re-done the garage doors and I didn’t want a control panel marring the new fascia we had installed surrounding the door frame.  I wanted to keep it clean but still wanted to be able to open the door if I wasn’t in the car.  What better way than with Siri!

Below is an example of the finished project.  Not very elegant, but I’ll address that later.  Basically what I’ve done is wired up a Raspberry Pi B+ with my Garage Door (only one side so far), and can control it with an iPhone and Siri to open and close.  I used the HAP Node JS project I alluded to in my previous post, with the GPIO onoff Node JS project to control the pins and keep things all Javascript like 😉

You can find instructions for this project here.