Personally I don’t have any automation and I don’t think that I will have some, but I was looking for something to do with some Arduino wireless boards when Souliss has started. At that time and still now I can see a lot of demands in DIY automations and few reliable solution.
I’ve coded for a couple of months before releasing the first code, no user interface and poor reliability, but almost working. It was a bit more than two years ago and now I can say: “It’s easy enough!”.
Almost all the people that join our community are able to control devices in their homes in few hours, getting them on Android or in the cloud. And that’s not a single shot, is something that scale and can cover a whole home. You will have your hands dirty and the end, but you don’t need to be a professional coder or even an electrician or an engineer. Get your Smart Home is easy as code an Arduino, you just have to read and get information over the web.
Souliss is the first project that I’ve build not for myself but as starting point for a community, and just now is turning in that way. Many of the most interesting features (like the openHAB interface or the cloud ZozOT) are coming from the community as the deep test of such people has turned Souliss into a reliable code.
Often while diving into the forum I get impressed, people starts to do amazing things that never can be done with a commercial product. Is almost one year ago when Lorenzo has started to share its idea and result, he used a 7’’ inch Android tablet as media server and installed SoulissApp over it, then he put a set of multicolor LED strip lights and get them synched with the movies or music played in his tavern.
Christian build the cheapest and simpler remote control for its electrical devices, mixing Souliss with an Arduino library for RF (radio controlled) sockets (20 euros for three sockets), controlling them from the smartphone and the internet.
What about Marco that kick its home gate using the GPS location or Fulvio that is buiding a complete automated home with more than 20 boards? The amazing Antonino is pushing its data consumption to the cloud using Android as home server. Is nice see that the community is building up a reliable, cheap and scalable automation system that fits many needs. Actually there are almost a thousand of people that use Souliss for simple and complex automation that hopefully will continue to growth in the near future.
So, what’s next? Actually the main features are there, but the project will need more people deeply involved because is becoming too large for the small team behind it. People that knows HTML5, Android and JAVA coding can really improve Souliss, is time to spread Souliss around and get more geeks involved.