Detecting motion with RPi

Using OpenCV library and few lines of Python code it's easy to create a simple motion detection with a Raspberry Pi.

This could be accomplished with other methods, like using a PIR sensor, but sometimes you just want to use a webcam without adding further hardware.

For this post I'm using my Sphaera configuration. This means that the video from a PiCamera is available as a web stream, but it would be easy to get your video frames from different sources...

Send photos with Telegram

In the last post we saw how to use the Telegram bot APIs to send a message from a Raspberry Pi to our smartphone.

This time I will show you how easy is sending a photo using the same APIs and the Python library. You can use the same APIs also for sending videos and audio files with really small efforts.

Adding a sensor zone to Sphaera

My Sphaera project is  nice and useful when used alone, but I designed it to be expandable quite easily by adding more Raspberry Pis to the LAN

Also, with the new extremely low cost Raspberry Pi Zero You can add several expansions at an affordable price without sacrifying system performance, as this new board has the same performances of an A+ model.

In this article I will show you just one example of configuration, but adding a new Raspberry Pi would be almost the same for any number of them.

It will be a short and surely not complete description, but could give you a starting point for building something similar. Anyway if you have some question about it, just ask.

Raspberry Pi and astronomy

This time I selected a topic a bit different from usual. After all the blog is about experiments and not only home automation, with RPi...

Since I was a child I've always loved astronomy. I own a small telescope and I took several photos with film cameras, but now I can go a step further thanks to my RPi.

Home automation server - Sphaera

When I showed you my RaPiRo some post ago I explained why I would not use it as a case for my home automation server.

Let's summarize just something...

First of all the power. 12 motors are quite "hungry" and this means that using batteries is not an option if you need to keep it active all the day. You need to power with a plug, so it's mobility would be greatly limited.

It's noisy. All that motors can be quite annoying.

It can detect movement, but only when it's not moving itself, so it can check just a small area at a time.

There are other cons, but these are enough to let me think about a different solution for my home automation server.

Raspberry Pi Robot (RaPiRo)

Ok, after spending almost a month doing many things not related to Raspberry Pi and home automation, I wish to  show one of the latest projects about RPi: RaPiRo (contraction of Raspberry Pi Robot).

This is a really nice small robot that can be 3d printed at home without too much trouble (if you wish you can also buy the full kit, but it will cost you much more).

By printing the shell and using many parts I had at home, I got this nice item at a really low cost.

But you may ask what this robot has to do with home automation.... Well, let's se how it could be used.

Face detection with Raspberry Pi

One nice thing that can be done with the latest technology is a really powerful image analysis. Also using a small unit like a Raspberry Pi can be enough to create tasks such as face detection and recognition.

These two tasks are quite similar. Detection is just the task of finding a face in an image (could be static image or a frame from a video stream). Recognition is finding a known face in a picture. 

For this post I will show you how to configure a small face detection system using a RPi and a PiCamera.

Sending pictures with Yowsup

One feature that could be quite useful in home automation is the ability to send pictures took with a webcam to our smartphone.

This could happen on request, by just asking to take a photo with our parser, or automatically when the script is programmed to do that (at specified intervals or maybe when detecting movements).

3D printer remote control

Let's keep Whatsapp aside for a while... This time I will offer you a short post about a useful Raspberry Pi application if you own a 3D printer.

3D printers are becoming more and more affordable. Still high in price, but today you can buy them for less than €600. They are not really easy to use, but they can be quite useful in many situations. Also for creating cases for your RPi!