Energy management is one of the major purposes of home automation together with home security and surveillance. Energy management means saving and using energy efficiently in residential areas so that you can reduce electricity consumption and create a green, energy saving house.
In this chapter, we will learn how to connect sensors to Intel Galileo and develop C applications that will give us the ability to develop specific devices only with Intel Galileo.
After you learn how to develop applications for Intel Galileo with a sample application, we will follow up with controlling electrical switches remotely to control the energy consumption of our home.
Energy management is about managing devices that consume energy in order to save energy and control their consumption. Saving energy will lead to the more efficient usage of resources and will reduce consumption. For energy management in Smart Homes, there are sensors that help you control devices to power them on or off.
Many sensors and devices are being produced for energy management purposes. Temperature sensors and energy meters are key sensors; relay switches and dimmers are essential actuators of energy management systems. You can either get a sensor and develop your own device to embed into your home, or you can directly buy devices to embed into your home and control them.
There are wall plugs with both energy meters and on/off switches, and lamp holders with switches and dimmers. Other sensors can be integrated with the energy management system to make them work more efficiently and automatically. Temperature, motion, or light sensors can be used to decide whether to switch on or switch off a remote switch on the system.
In the chapter, we will start with a simple sensor to see how we can connect it to Intel Galileo and get readings from it. With what you have learned from this section, you can proceed to work with more complex sensors. Then we will proceed with the Z-Wave controller, which is connected to a remote wall plug to switch it off.