I recently went to a Microcenter near by and bought an Raspberry PI Zero W
For $5,- I could simply not resist. Not only is this a full blown computer with micro-hdmi out, it also can be used to connect other hardware to it with ease. The connector on the right is there to connect a camera to the PI Zero.
Well, after installing raspbian onto a micro-SD card, I went ahead and bought a camera as open-box item for only $12,- and got the combo to work in no time flat.
That is all well and good but what can you truly do with this hardware ? The answer for me is/was
Home Automation.
I have looked into
However my issue was not so much the price of these devices, after all it takes a lot of effort and money to develop a great product, it was the physical shape and size which made any of the available products unusabe for me.
So I thought I would simply add a few pieces together and create my own Video Doorbell from scratch using the PI and a few other software and hardware parts, which can be found online.
It is of course very helpful, that there is such a huge community behind the PI and that almost everything you can come up with has been attempted before. So googling around I found a bunch of sites with similar goals, like this one here.
Here are the next steps to get from idea to finished project.
- Building the chassis ( and BOM )
- Connecting the camera
- Adding microphone and speaker
- Installing a notification server ( pushd )
- Writing a cross platform app ( iOS / Android )
- Connecting all the pieces
Feel free to subscribe to my blog