Setting up hardware for home automation with the RPZ
Home automation has become more popular as Internet of Things devices become more affordable and available. The Raspberry Pi Zero certainly fits the bill: for what would have cost thousands of dollars a few years ago, a handful of sensors and a few Raspberry Pis can turn your home into a "smart home," where you can not only sense what is going on (temperature, lighting, motion, and so on), but you can control things too. With a few Raspberry Pi Zeros and these recipes, you have the potential to do things such as:
- Turning lights on and off using a relay controlled by the GPIO
- Opening and closing shades with a stepper motor
- Checking the temperature in any room of your house
- Getting an alert when motion is detected
The possibilities are truly limited; in this recipe, we will look at setting up the hardware for a simple, single-node home automation system.
Getting ready
For this recipe, you will use your Raspberry Pi Zero as your "...