Small project made as an example showcase for the IOTOPIA contest in Belgium. Two little houses connect with each other through WiFi and the SmartLiving cloud platform.
Stay in touch with a long-distance relation in a fun way. Simply put your house on your desk, nightstand or anywhere else you like. The button on top of the chimney toggles a message on the other house. It also let's the other person know you are at home.
A status LED (are you at home or away?) on your own house mimics the setting of the display on the other house.
Furthermore, you can use the SmartLiving platform to send any custom message to the other house from your computer or mobile phone! The apps can also be used to control your chimney button when you are not near your little house.
Ideation storyboardPress the button on your chimney to let your long distance relative know you are home.
Or send him/her a custom message through the web or mobile app.
Press the chimney again to turn off his/her house when you leave your home.
Note: the 5.0 hours to complete all depends on your Lego-building skills =) Connecting and setting up the devices and rules in SmartLiving doesn't take long. Full source code is also available below.
Set Default ValuesIf you don't like light-gray, you can specify another display background colour in the Arduino sketch.
// Define default values
#define red 30
#define green 30
#define blue 30
In the SmartLiving platform you can set and change the default message you want to send when pressing the chimney button.
We need to set a few rules in SmartLiving to link the assets of both houses. As with everything, you need to set this up twice. Once to link the assets of house 1 to house 2 and once to do it the other way round.
This is how the house looks on the inside with the Genuino101, Grove shield and all components connected.
Below you can see how to build them yourself. Both halves of the roof (front and back) are shown twice to give a better look on how it is built.
The houses are built with mostly standard bricks. You might still have them lying around somewhere. If not, you can always visit bricklink and order some.
Note: this list, as well as the component list below is what you need to build 1 house. You need to double everything to set up two houses =)
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