Raspberry Pi 3 based home automation with Node.js and React Native
This looks like a lot of fun! Using a RaspPi is really attractive to me because you can make everything interoperate, and nothing depends on some company's servers.I've done two Pi projects now that I keep meaning to blog about. One was a sprinkler control system. My old system was dying, and not very flexible, so I decided to run everything off a Pi. The tricky part was driving 13 sprinkler lines with 24V AC current. I bought a 16-relay board and eventually got it wired up. For someone with little electronics experience, there was a lot to learn. [1] is an attempt before I realized I had to use the relays. Eventually I got it working and used it all summer. With cron, I can schedule things however I want!The second is a security camera for a vacation rental home, and is not quite done yet. The hardware side was not challenging at all, but I still need to work out how to copy the images up to S3 or a Linode. I'm using MotionEyeOS and it doesn't seem to know how to do that itself. One of the big reasons I went with a Pi is I didn't want to pay or rely on someone else's servers. Also I wanted to avoid the security problems that have been in the news lately. I don't want inbound traffic to my LAN; I'd rather push the video somewhere else.It took me a long time to figure out worthwhile uses for a Pi. A friend of mine loves using these things for media servers and CI servers and whatnot, but to me it's only satisfying if it's something where you actually need the miniature scale. Also a Pi really hits the sweet spot for me in terms of hardware-vs-software. I'm sure I could have done the first project with an Arduino, but using ssh, cron, and python was really nice.[1] http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/50435/driving...