security – ~scriven

Another use I had for a Small Board Computer was as a door security system. The Raspberry Pi with attached Adafruit touchscreen and camera would be perfect for this. Also add a magnetic sensor for “door open”, and a more general motion or even position sensor.

I actually got most of the way through the basics of this project. One of the problems I ran into was getting a clean picture to the rpi’s camera through the door’s existing peephole. It would probably be best to figure out a solution better suited to the camera, and just swap out eye-pieces when the door camera is installed (remembering to keep the original one for replacement if you ever need to).
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I’ve been thinking of how useful a little computer on the balcony would be. Not for any kind of interactive use, but for data collection and light controls and other such things. I thought I’d make up a list of these “such things”, to see what it would take to make it a reality.

The original seed for the idea was a weather station, just to see how cold and windy-ish it was, as well as barometric pressure readings. Since it’s on a covered balcony, the wind readings will be interesting but probably quite local. I’m also not going to worry about precipitation measuring, nor wind-direction measuring at first. It shouldn’t get much rain, nor will the direction of the wind be generally useful most of the time I don’t think. I’m certainly prepared to be wrong on that, but that’s what the prior versions will be for.
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