Book Image

Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone

By : William Pretty
Book Image

Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone

By: William Pretty

Overview of this book

One of the best kept secrets of the security industry is just how simple the monitoring hardware actually is - BeagleBone has all the computing power you need to build yourself an extremely sophisticated access control, alarm panel, and home automation and network intrusion-detection system. Security companies make a fortune each year by charging exorbitant fees to their customers. You will learn how easy it is to make an alarm system with Beaglebone. A company-maintained-and-monitored alarm system has its place - your dear old mum is probably not going to be creating her own system any time soon. But if you are reading this book, you are probably a builder or a hobbyist with all the skills required to do it yourself. With Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone, you will learn everything you need to know to develop your own state-of-the-art security system, all for less than a year's worth of monitoring charges from your local alarm company! You will start by building and testing your hardware and open source software on an experimenter's prototype board before progressing to more complex systems. You will then learn how to test your new creations in a modular fashion and begin to utilize BeagleBone. Once your system is built and tested, you will install some of the professional-grade sensors used in modern alarm systems and learn how to use them. You will also discover how to extend your alarm system in a variety of different ways. The only limit will be your imagination.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

The software


The programming language that I chose was JavaScript. This is because it is already well supported on the BeagleBone as it comes to you from the supplier. You can access the Cloud9 integrated development environment (IDE) from the Start.html link on the microSD card image.

There are plenty of very good tutorials and videos on how to use the Cloud9 IDE, so I have not included one here.

What the software does is, it watches an input pin waiting for it to go low. If the pin goes low, the software makes an output pin go high. This simulates an alarm panel monitoring a set of contacts, waiting for an alarm to occur.

In order to turn the alarm off, the software monitors another pin. If this pin goes low, it turns the alarm off. This is to simulate an alarm key switch being turned to the disarm position, but any type of contact closure will do.

Tip

Downloading the example code and image files

You can download the example code and image files for all Packt books you have purchased from...