Biobug.org

Projects, notes, etc by Will O’Brien

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Category: iPhone

Cheap Wifi Thermostat with a JSON API

9 April, 2012 (08:08) | hardware, iPhone, networking, Toys | 10 comments

I updated my thermostat to one of these. It’s made by Homewerks (Home depot sells a filtrete branded version.) It’s not as cool as the NEST, but it’ll do the job of controlling a furnace/AC. The interesting part of this device is that the wifi interface can be cloud managed, making it possible to control [...]

SMS remote start usability update

17 December, 2011 (14:51) | hardware, SMSresponder | 3 comments

Ok, so it’s been a week since I installed the SMS interface. I took the car out to Winter Park for a week of sliding down the mountain and gave the system a real world test. (Tried it from my hotel room while the car was outside) and it worked! I just gave it another [...]

SMSresponder interface schematic

17 December, 2011 (14:42) | hardware, SMSresponder | 9 comments

I whipped up a clean schematic for my current version of the SMS responder. I left out the iphone dock connector because I used a breakout board – and really, it’s easier that way, you can cable over to the iphone. Click to view the entire schematic – my blog trims the images (I don’t [...]

SMS Remote Start – working prototype

11 December, 2011 (19:01) | hardware, iPhone, News, SMSresponder | 4,398 comments

A quick update on the SMS remote start using my old iPhone… It works! I can now start my Subaru outback via SMS command from wherever I am. I used an older Arduino simply because I wanted a quick and dirty 3.3v source for the iphone to arduino serial interface. The perfboard has a tip120 [...]

iPhone dev: SMSresponder

28 November, 2011 (10:44) | iPhone, Projects, SMSresponder | 31 comments

I’ve built a perl script to enable SMS remote start of my car. The script checks the SMS database for new messages and if the message meets the criteria, it will send a command out the serial port, log the event and send a reply sms for confirmation. Everything is done in perl! My script [...]