Machinon Takes the Hard Work Out of Building a Raspberry Pi Home Automation System

Home automation is becoming increasingly popular, and the Internet of Things (IoT) promises to make it easy to create a smart home. There are just two major problems: nothing in your house was built for IoT, and new IoT-ready appliances are a proprietary nightmare. Comprehensive plug-and-play solutions don’t exist, so you have to build your own. Machinon is hardware designed to make that easy to do with a Raspberry Pi.

If you’re considering home automation, you probably want to control and monitor everything in your house. Your HVAC system, lighting, and energy usage are all important. But, you’re unlikely to find an Alexa-compatible device to handle all of those — and heaven forbid you decide to switch from an Echo to a Google Home. Machinon lets you build a system-agnostic smart home by bridging the gap between a Raspberry Pi (or any computer) and the appliances you already have in every room.

Machinon accomplishes that with a combination of 16 digital inputs that work as pulse counters, and eight analog inputs that monitor a variety of inputs. All of them can be configured through a web interface to provide the proper readings. That data can then be pushed to the Raspberry Pi, or used with a set of 16 digital outputs to control devices and appliances. Four configurable buttons and a LCD display can be used to monitor the system from Machinon itself. Finally, everything works with the open source MySensors protocol, so you don’t have to worry about proprietary red tape. Machinon isn’t for sale yet, but you can register on their website for updates.

[h/t: Eben Upton]