My introduction to home automation was lower level than home, and considerably less than automated. It was a single board computer based on the RCA CDP1802 with little more than a monitor program responding to commands like "L1" to turn a light on and "L0" to turn it back off. I saw it for the first time in person at a microcomputer show at Woodlands Hill Mall in Tulsa, Oklahoma, sometime in late 1978. A friend at work had built the board and added the triac to control a 110V incandescent bulb. He used a teletype as the serial console to enter commands. It wasn't much compared to today's technology but at the time it was an incredible prototype.

I was fascinated with the concept, it seemed like something out of science fiction. And when I started reading Steve Ciarcia's articles in BYTE Magazine I was hooked. I think it was his I've Got You in My Scanner (Vol3-11, P76) article that made me believe I could do such things. I looked forward to his storytelling culminating in an almost practical tech solution in each issue. That weighed heavily on my future hobby choices.

Side trip: The wondrous advertisements in BYTE, I remember looking at those exotic $2-300 Shugart 5MB hard disk drives and the Cromemco and Ohio Scientific CPU boards. Eight or nine years later my first HDD was 10MB and set me back about a hundred bucks at a Dallas first Saturday ham-radio/computer flea market. Good times. Contasting that with today, I just put a 4TB M.2 in my desktop - 400,000 times the storage, 1000 times the performance - and only 3 times the price. But the 10MB HDD was far more exhilarating

My first actual computer "controlled" home was in about 1989 when I scored an X10 PowerHouse kit. It used the computer's serial interface to send signals to X10 plug-in modules controlling a couple of lights. The adapter itself had switches to manually control the devices in addition to the software, but since it was attached to the computer, and the computer was upstairs in the loft, it wasn't terribly convenient for use in the living room or bedrooms. This eventually led to an RF receiver and the "Firecracker" RF interface anda few RF remote controls, plus a significant education regarding how X10 didn't cross into the home's other AC phase without a bridge.

Another detour: The early X10 modules were subject to electrical noise on the power lines. They would occasionally turn on for no legitimate reason leading to the occasional middle-of-the-night "Why did you turn the light on?", and on one occasion, a house clearing when returning from work when no one else was home but a rogue light was on.

The next generation HA arrived along with the next house. I found an awesome program called MisterHouse, which was open source, written in Perl, and could be extended to include almost anything useful for home automation. It supported my existing X10 stuff, added the ability to use X10's wireless security modules and the WGL Designs W800RF32 to receive signals from wireless remote controls and keychain remotes, motion detectors and a multitude of other devices.

I added door sensors to all the exterior doors, a couple of light controllers in the kitchen and living room, and motion sensors in the kitchen, main hallway, gameroom hallway, and on the back porch. Through a bit of PERL magic, when someone opened either of the kitchen doors after dark the brighter of the two kitchen lights would come on and stay on until there haad been no motion in the kitchen for 5 minutes unless they went into the gameroom. From the other direction, if someone got up in the middle of the night and started down the hallway a small LED nightlight would brighten in the living room. If they continued toward the kitchen the less bright kitchen light would turn on and remain on until the motion was gone for 3-4 minutes. Nothing really exotic, but certainly a convenience. I had manual/remote controls on the detached garage halogen floods covering the basketball goal, the floodlights covering the walk out to the barn, and all of the garage's interior and exterior lights. A simple motion sensor over the garage lit up the area lights when someone pulled into the driveway. No computer control over the latter.

The next home took another leap forward when I discovered Insteon. The computer interface maintained X10 compatibility while adding Insteon device monitoring and control with the concept of scenes, or stimulus-dependant activity lists. And the new Insteon Hub made cloud control via the iPhone App possible. I had never allowed Misterhouse access from outside the home network, so being able to set things in motion while driving home from work was a whole new level. I also developed a set of MisterHouse modes, like a Christmas mode to turn the Christmas tree lights on at 6PM and off at 10:30PM, or the far more useful Vacation mode. Vacation controlled an assortment of lights to make it look like we were home doing our normal activities. The living room lights came on before dusk, went off at a semi-random time after "dinner time" when the "TV room" lights upstairs went on. Then at a semi-random time the bedroom lights went on and stayed on until sometime between 10:14 and 10:30. It's trivial to set up specific light timers, the magic is making them appear at different times within the normal pattern so they don't look like timers. Good learning experience.

Insteon added some attractive remote controls and I made an effort to add to my system when they had a sale. They had a pretty polished look and seemed to get my wife's approval.

The intelligence built in to the Insteon computer interface and the way it interacted with all the devices was a minor irritant. I preferred to keep the control within MisterHouse.

So now, in 2024, I think I'll map out the roles I really want in a home automation system for the latest house. We already have wired door sensors, remote controlled garage doors, smart outdoor Christmas lighting under the eaves. Maybe some WireShark work to reverse engineer the garage and lighting protocols will let me monitor and control them with a MisterHouse or HomeAssistant add-in. I know I can merge the door sensors into MH and I can merge all of it into a database with a web/app interface. New ESP32/8266 wifi devices can be deployed with motion, and light, temperature and humidity sensing to trigger various responses. I could use a millimeter wave presence detecter to do interesting things for occupied rooms or areas. I can add an outdoor weather station. I can probably also add a network monitor for the existing security cameras and enhance the lighting and response when they detect motion. Lots to consider, but first, the Insteon PLM needs to be erased and reconfigured and some light swtiches are in need of update. More as it occurs.

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