Arduino and Android, lets start the Home Automation

If you are looking for a starting point to build a reliable and scalable home automation by your-self, this is the right project. Keys like Arduino, Android and Open-Source are must. This is the first of a series of post with the goal of a basic description about Souliss, giving an easy way to understand how and why you could use it.

This video gives some ideas of the potentiality of Souliss for the following reasons:

  • It shows a distributed architecture, two LED strips are controlled by two different Arduino Ethernet boards with a driver shield over it. Even if are two different boards they can work as a single one.
  • Data processing is impressive fast, compared to ASCII based protocols, Souliss’ binary MaCaco is effective and fast. From the Android application a stream of commands drive the light color and intensity of the strips.
  • The video is just an example of a whole house that has Souliss has Home Automation system. While scrolling the list you will see five boards (there are Arduino Ethernet and wireless Freakduino Chibi) and several devices attached to.

What you cannot see in this video is how simple is the setup and development, scalability means ability to customize to your own needs, that’s a key of Souliss that hardly can be found in other home automation or internet of things projects that are based on DIY solutions.

Out of this website, there are other two important sources for downloading the SoulissApp Android application and the Arduino library and sketches. The wiki will drive you in the first setup and the forum will support for doubts, problems and questions.

If you are reading this post probably is the first time that you hear about Souliss, if so, share it with your friends.

Regards, The Souliss Team.