COOLRF: recent history. Part one

I have long been interested in the "smart home". At one time he tried to be a dealer of one of the manufacturers. Took part in a specialized exhibition. Communicated with a bunch of people. Everyone wants, everyone is interested. Not a single sale of exhibition communication in the end did not happen. In general, the queue of volunteers did not arise. The manufacturer required the purchase of regular, not small volumes. I decided not to risk it and curtailed this collaboration. Having lost as a result of several tens of thousands of rubles invested money.



Time went by. On the shelf was a box with unsold modules. Occasional urges to install them in the apartment always ended with reading documentation. In some places would have to redo the wiring, in some places to arrange some tricky somersaults with wires. My perfectionist thinking did not withstand this and the box continued to remain in its place not devastated.

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After each such file, I began to look for replacement options on the Internet. Something simple, not expensive and affordable to purchase. And each search necessarily ended in failure. This is not to say that it was precisely those failures that led to the start of COOLRF. Then I did not even think about the development of electronics. Begin the project helped a series of accidents.

Soviet past

I must say that I was very far from electronics all these years. As a child I had three paths of development - a “soldering iron” of my grandfather, a “camera” and a “computer” of my father. The schoolboy me had a complete set of soldering accessories (I personally had a couple of soldering irons, various parts, printed circuit boards, etc.) and a full set of a young photographer (two cameras - “Sharp” and “FED”, a photo enlarger, a glossy , a little less than a ton of photographic paper with complete chemistry living in the fridge, a red lantern for development activities and a decent pile of trays, which later with pleasure were used by different generations of family cats).



In the sixth grade I went to a special circle on electronics. There we soldered a little, put some interesting memorable experiences (such as making a radio receiver from potatoes) and played a lot on the local computer. For several minutes one after another in a strict queue. This was before the massive advent of television set-top boxes. It was the ZX-Spectrum. And 1991 is the yard.



In the seventh grade, I had my own personal ZX-Spectrum in the form of the Yekaterinburg clone with the mysterious name "Magik-05". The soldering irons quickly moved to the storeroom, the photographic equipment remained for many years to lie in a large box under the bed. I started to become (and became) a programmer. Soldering iron, my hands are no longer touched.

Chinese Arduino

In the 2012th year, the Internet increasingly began to emerge here and there a new unusual word. "Arduino". Having missed all this a couple of five times past my ears, I became interested in details. And I was very surprised at how much progress was made. A soldering iron is no longer needed, you can program in ordinary C in a simple and understandable environment. Necessary for a homemade smart home components are not expensive and miniature. "We must take."



In the fall of 2012, I made my first purchase in China. Ordered the Arduino Nano, a dual relay module, two low-cost radio transmitters NRF24L01 + and a USB to TTL adapter based on PL2303HX. My "ingenious" plan for conquering the world assumed the use of an adapter to connect a radio module to a computer, to control a relay through arduinka with the same radio module connected. Cheap, angry, innovative.



Naturally, the world was not conquered in a jiffy. The adapter provides a serial port output, and the radio module is controlled by SPI. Of course, I read about it much later, already twirling the devices received after two months of waiting. My next order came in the Chinese New Year, I just waited for it for a long time.

Local public

In order not to be bored much, in the beginning of 2013 I bought something necessary in local stores, namely: a translucent plastic cup under the switch, a “crown” battery, a connector for it and the Legrand switch-button. Some of those purchases were later "spotted" in the project.



The first solution was supposed to be this: in the switch box we close the line, making the lamp constantly energized, put the arduinka + radio module + battery in the empty space of the box behind the switch, connect the switch leads to the arduinka. Arduino + radio module + relay + miniature power supply unit 220 volt are installed in the base of the ceiling lamp.



In the middle of February 2013, at one popular Ekaterinburg forum, I created a topic about experiments with a smart home based on ready-made Chinese solutions. In general, the people liked the initiative, under the posts the advantages began to appear, it became clear that many people wanted to have something similar. Inexpensive and expandable.



In parallel with this, I read, read and read again. The design of the crown, arduino and radio module did not quite fit into the place allotted for the switch. It turned out that the usual arduino from the battery does not live very long and the collective farm will be needed with the replacement of the built-in voltage regulator. Also in general, it would be difficult to pack this hodgepodge in some kind of complete box solution, and the distribution was not ideal enough for me.



I began to understand that the standard Arduino in my endeavor to “get off” will not work. And non-standard solutions, I obviously did not pull any knowledge or financially. So it seemed to me then. Arduinka was removed to the drawer of the table, the topic on the local resource - abandoned.



… To be continued…



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