Unboxing Eaton Home Heartbeat Home Awareness

My Eaton Home Awareness kit just arrived.  I got quite an assortment of parts for less than $50 to start playing with and hacking.    What I got is the starter kit which includes the base stations, one home key, and one door/window sensor.  Also a second home key and door/window sensor, a range extender, and the garage door sensor.

I am very impressed with the garage door sensor, and had one of those “why didn’t I think of that” moments.   I have been struggling to come up with a good clean design to detecting if the garage door is opened or closed.  All of my designs involved some type of contact switch, which I tried placing in various location and required a lot of tweaking and constant adjusments.  The solution the home awareness kit uses is very clever.  It employs a “tilt switch” that you just stick to the garage door.  If the tilt switch is vertical the garage door is closed and if the tilt swich is horizontal the garage door is open.

At this point all that I have done with the kit was simply plug it in and charge the home key, but I will post more information as I start working with the base station.

Steve has gone much more in-depth in his review and technical exploring which you can read over at his blog http://buzzdavidson.com/?p=261.

Let me know what you have discovered with this device and how you currently use it.

Home heatbeat devices can also still be found on Amazon.com