[monkpea]

Hi,

What options are available for using my mac mini to control switches and in other ways interact with its environment, including monitoring analogue inputs such as from a thermocouple?

Say for building my own automatic house control system or controling greenhouse shutters.

There must be usb hobby devices out there, perhaps i didn't look hard enough, but all I could find were expensive scientific jobbies.

Anyone have any experience of this, ADCs, USB... Any good links or books...

Many thanks,


monkpea

[MaxPower]

I have seen some mention of USB I/O devices that work with OSX:

http://bionode.com/
http://www.perfsci.com/hardware.htm

Are two that come up with a quick google search. I have done some looking as well and there is not much to be had. Another avenue to go down is to build your home controller using microcontroller that has an ethernet interface, like a TINI from Dallas Semiconductor, or some of the AVRs from Atmel. Then you can write a spiffy web interface to do the trick.

[ghporter]

You could check out National Instruments' site. Their home page featured a USB data acquisition device when I looked a minute ago.

[monkpea]

Thanks! These are exactly what I was looking for, I found the btop1, but must have been drunk and dismissed it.

[subego]

Originally Posted by monkpea

Say for building my own automatic house control system or controling greenhouse shutters.

If you want to do this through an x10 setup, Smarthome sells the PowerLinc as well as Indigo, which is spiffy OS X software.

X10 is a somewhat flaky way to implement things, but since it's been around so long, a lot of different devices have been designed to use it.

Oh. I just found funforgeeks.com the "Mac home automation specialists"