The idea behind this project is to automate home appliances and devices based on the daily activities defined in your calendar.
The project flow involves 3 primary steps
1. The daily activities of each individual family member can be shared as an .ics file
2. An App running on Azure that collates daily activities from the calendar as well as maintains exceptions to be applied on the daily schedule. The App also maintains configuration files that will be used in controlling the devices at home.
3. A Raspberry Pi to control the appliances/devices in the house.
A simple scenario is considered here to explain the workings of the project.
A family member (user) sets up his/her calendar to define a regular start time for the work day. The user can configure the number of hours before start of work day when he should be waken-up. The Azure app will read the configuration and calendar file to prepare the activities for the day. The Raspberry Pi at home will read the data provided by Azure app and setup activities for the day. In a regular scenario, the Raspberry Pi will sound the wake-up alarm at the predefined time based on the user's calendar. Similarly, the water heater will be switched on based on the defined wake-up time. If the user's calendar shows an early start to the day (based on travel schedule, meetings etc), then the alarm, water heater start-up etc will be adjusted accordingly.
The home appliances/devices will be connected to a smart plug which will enable the Raspberry Pi to communicate indirectly with the devices. In this manner, any appliances can be controlled by Raspberry Pi and the startup/shutdown can be changed using the App configuration files (UI). The configuration files can be updated using speech control using the Cortana application.
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