July 14, 2016

C.H.I.P

So I was too late to the hype of Pi Zero, the $5 Raspberry pi, and have not been able to get my hands on one since the launch. Everywhere has been sold out everytime I check :(

I can’t remember how I stumble upon them, but I found an equaly as awesome project on kickstarter. C.H.I.P. A $9 board that runs linux. Esentially the same specs as the PiZero, CHIP also includes onboard wifi and BlueTooth 4.0! Amazing right?! So I now have one of these on order, hopefully in the mail soon. This just opens up the possibilites of home automation. From reading their documentation, it seems to run a slighty modified version of Debian (I assume just to include some performance enhancements to support the hardware). It Also includes lots of GPIO pins so you can hook up any type of sensor that you would be able to with a raspberrypi, with CHIP.

$9 board with wifi and GPIO pins. Means I can cheaply add any type of sensor I want to pretty much every room in the house. Easily hook this up to my OpenHAB controller (which I will make a post about soon) and create some awesome automation rules to keep things running smootly. For example, I have a few watts clever power remotes, so I could add CHIP into the master bedroom, monitor the temperature and turn the wall heater on/off as required during the night. Super useful during these cold winter months!

So many other things to be done. Need to decide on what I want it to do before it arrives so I can get to it straight away!