Home Automation Projects - Smart Chairs
* Disclaimer: Please remember I am not responsible for anything you may destroy! (including yourself!) This is simply a project I took on in my own house that I thought some of you may enjoy. Proceed at your own risk. Thank you!
This project uses the pressure mat mod and the DS10A mod.
First thing I did was to see just how I could take the chair apart and still be able to put it back together! For my dining room chairs this ended up not being a problem at all. I just flipped the chair over, removed the staples from the upholestry and carefully pulled away the material from the foam inside. This gave me a nice solid base to put the pressure mat on.
Now on to the pressure mat. I cut the pressure mat to about half the size of the chair. I then closed up the open ends with duck tape to make a nice pressure mat about 8"x8" in size. I then slid the mat under the foam of the chair, directly on top of the plywood base. Pulled the material back tight and restapled it down with just the cord coming out from within the padding.
Next I screwed the modified DS10A with a 12 second delay on to the bottom of the chair. Connected up the wire coming from the pressure mat. Flipped the chair back over (very important!) and that's it!
Within HomeSeer I set up some scripting that sets a flag so that even if you sit completly still, say reading the newspaper, the lights will stay on while seated. Since all my lighting is motion based, this really brings up the WAF!
pictures coming soon
I've also done something very similiar in the Livingroom. For this one I made my own pressure sensor. I needed something made out of a stronger material so I made one out of some thin sheet metal, seperated by some cardboard and held together with duck tape. The wires I simply epoxied on, soldier wouldn't stick. In this case all I had to do was lift the cushion and place the sensor underneath, the wires ran outside the chair and connected to the modified DS10A. I then just placed the DS10A in the side pocket of the chair. Once again I use some scripting to let HomeSeer know how to respond to people sitting in the chair.
pictures coming soon
Have Fun!
 |
