Coach Automation

[davidbrady]

To continue on our earlier discussion of the costs and inconveniences of the defacto standard coach automation systems, namely RTI, AMX, and Crestron.

I took 30 minutes and installed an open source home automation server on my pc called openHab. I also downloaded the openHab iPad app and android app. The apps instantly found my server and connected to it allowing me to toggle switches on my server which will then send signals to relays, rs232, infrared, powerline protocols and the like to make changes to SpongeBob systems.

PC
, and

iPad


SpongeBob currently uses AMX Accent3 to control just seven systems, excluding Audio/Visual for the time being: the front door lock, stateroom lights, salon lights (left and right), shades, lights master, and panel lights. The Accent3 does this by strobing its 8 internal relays which are then wired to the coach's DC relay panel:



It's very simple matter to run my openHab server on a $35 Raspberry Pi using just a handful of its 40 GPIO, general purpose input/output pins, to connect to the DC relay panel.

So, for folks with outdated, unsupported systems you have a very powerful and inexpensive solution at your disposal. If all you have is handheld control over mission critical bus operations; i.e., no wall switches, then you need to look into a solution like this.

Take a look at the expansive support, integration, and interoperation openHab provides with industry vendors, what openHab refers to as bindings. Virtually all home control protocols and devices are represented over here.