Laser Based Intruder Alert! ( Home Automation )

Hi everyone!

I'm Geeve George a MAKER proudly from INDIA!

I started making at the age of 10 and my zeal for making still continues as I am fascinated by the endless possibilities and opportunities that technology offers!

HAT! is my series of home automation projects and it stands for Home Automation Tweeter.

This is the FOURTH project from the series.

This project plays an important role in Home automation & Home Security , the project is called Home Automation Intruder Monitor!

Have fun making this project , we will be dealing with low power lasers! ( Do not use high power lasers! )

*Use only a 5 mW red/any color laser!

Make this project and have lots of fun reverse engineering it!

Thanks again to Intel , Audrey and Instructables for the Grove IoT Developers Kit , some of the components of this kit is required for this home automation project. :)

Materials Required :

- An Intel Edison Board connected to the Arduino Extension Board or an Intel Galileo Board.

-Grove Light Sensor

-Grove Buzzer

-Grove LCD RGB Backlight Display ( LCD Display , 16*2 )

-Grove Base Shield

-Grove 26AWG Cable Wires

-Laser Pointer ( 5mW ) ( Do not use powerful lasers! )

Steps :

1) -Firstly Connect the USB Cables to the Board!

2) -Then take out the Grove Base Shield and plug it on to the board!

3)-Next take out one 26AWG Grove Cable and connect it to the Grove Light Sensor.

4) -Then connect the Cable to A0 pin in the Base Shield.

5) -Now take out the LCD Display and connect it to the Grove Cable.

6) -Connect the other end of the grove cable to I2C in the Grove Base Sheild!

7) -Now take out the Grove Buzzer and connect it to D8 pin

8) Now setup all the Hardware as shown in the First Picture!

9) Setup the Laser and light sensor parallel to each other as shown in the second and third picture!

10) -That's all for the hardware setup!

*Refer the first Picture to see the Hardware Setup also the Video for the connections and a detailed overview!

*Try to setup the Laser and the Light Sensor in such a way that they are parallel to each other as shown in the second and third picture!

Firstly you need to setup WIFI on your Edison Board to do so visit :

https://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-23147

After setting up WiFi you need to download the following libraries :

1) Twitter Libraries from : http://arduino-tweet.appspot.com/ ( Also the Twitter Token key is to be noted! )

2) Wifi library ( Present in the Arduino IDE by Default )

3) SPI library ( Present in the Arduino IDE by Default )

4) RGB LCD Display Library

*To install the LCD Display libraries , download a zip file from here .

Extract the contents of the zip file to the arduino IDE folder.

Open the extracted folder and go into the libraries folder and copy Grove_LCD_RGB_Backlight to Arduino libraries folder.

After that open the arduino ide and go to sketch>import libraries>add libraries and select the folder containing the LCD Display libraries and click open.Again go to sketch> import libraries and select the LCD Library.

Now its time to code!

Download the attached ino file here :

Come on guys reverse engineer the code and make amazing stuff for a better world , a better tomorrow!

How does this project work?

As you can see in the video below, in this project we used buzzers , light sensors , LCD Displays and lasers!!

The code for this project was challenging and interesting for me to work on.

In this project we will be using light sensors , lcd display, lasers, buzzers and the Twitter API to detect when an intruder enters your home , while you are away from your home!

Intruders wont be able to notice a 5mW Laser as it wont show the path of light unless exposed to a dense environment!

When the intruder enters the room were your valuables are placed the buzzer turns on and a tweet is sent to your twitter account , thus you can see the tweet from your office or anywhere you are and take immediate action by notifying the neighbors or take an action yourself!

I came up with the innovation to use Light sensors in my Home Automation Tweeter series of projects as photoresistors are very cheap and efficient!. In this project we will be converting String to Char .

I made use of LCD Displays in this project to notify the user that the tweet is going to be made , we will see how to code simple LCD Animation and finally tweet out the warnings when an intruder enters your home!

Best of luck , keep making!

Now its time for the tests and results!

After all the coding here is the final result!

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for updates on projects also I am a house music producer so stay tuned!

This project is very useful as a user can apply this technology in his home and can monitor it via the internet! i.e through Twitter through his/her Twitter account!

This is the most efficient , cheap and fast way to monitor home electronics while you are away from home it can be used to monitor the state of all the devices at home which can be used to save electricity efficiently , ensure home security and much more!

Good luck! Keep making!

If you have any issues or doubts leave a comment below!I'll be happy to reply to them :)

More projects coming soon in the HAT! series of projects so stay tuned! :D

Let's see the working of this project from the video above! Sit back and enjoy! ;)