Home Automation for your games?

GaryMcT

Active member

Donor 2011
Joined
Jun 4, 2009
Messages
2,346
Reaction score
24
Location
Carnation, Hawaii
Has anyone set up home automation to switch the power on all of your games? I'm looking into this and trying to figure out a safe and cost effective way to do this so that it's fairly cheap to support 50-ish games.

I'm looking for something that I can control from an iPad or a computer. . can write code to do a user interface, etc. Would really like something that at least responds back to a state change request so that the software can display the current state, or better yet be poll-able for state requests.

Would love to be able to hit a single button on an iPad or otherwise to turn all my games on one at a time with a few seconds between each power up, and a single button to turn them all off immediately. Want to also be able to turn individual machines on easily.

Anyone done this?
 
Uh. Home automation is a pain the pocket book.

Right now the only cheap home automation that I know of is X-10, which has a lot of issues, no feedback and a general tendency (in my experience) to be flaky as hell.

For the DIY, but don't want to/can't do the line-voltage control isolation stuff, there's this guy from Sparkfun (basically, a micro-controller controlled relay in power pigtail). But it's $28/each, which is VERY expensive when you're talking about 50 machines!

There's some alternatives to X-10, but everything I've ever seen was VERY pricey. Things could have changed since last I looked, but I don't think they have.

How much are you willing, per machine, to spend to get this done?

I should think that one could build a 'remote-control power strip' using a small micro-controller, using something like the xbee modules or bluetooth for communications, but that's probably around $20/unit for the comm module + the micro + the relays or whatever, etc, etc. So it adds up after a while, but you could do it.
 
Last edited:
I have a crestron system in the home and use it to trigger X10 modules to turn on the games in sequence with slight delays. The games are grouped in 'zones', typically 3-4 pins per X10 appliance module and such. It also turns on the appropriate lights and others off for the 'arcade mode'.

And while I could do the polling to see what game is on,I dont really care. I can see its on :)

Crestron is a touch overkill just for sequencing an arcade on, but its fun :)

Its also very nice for hitting one button to turn everything off in the arcade!

X10 is a pain to work with at first, but with the right phase coupler and blocking module its proved fairly reliable for me.
 
There is a product that works on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod that is called Red Eye. It is a small antenna you plug in to your device and you download the app. it becomes a universal remote that can be set up to run just about anything. If the is no code for the device you want to use, you point the remote at your device and it captures the signal.
So, I with this said, I know there are all sorts of plugs that can be switched on and off via a remote, such as Christmas lights and such.
If you pair the red eye and the remote power strip/plug, you could set up your game room to be controlled by your iPhone, iPad, or iPod.
Granted, I have not done it, but I do own the red eye antenna, and have used it for other things, and I can see it working reasonably well for a game room
 
Could you not use something like an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, have it wired to some relays to power the machines on and off, and have it hooked wirelessly, thru wifi or XBee, to remotely on troll it thru an app??

You could I it with 1 device wired up to a bunch of relays I would think.
 
I've got Belkin conserve power strips ( https://www.belkin.com/conserve/switch/ and https://www.belkin.com/conserve/switchav/ )... they have a wireless remote to turn the power strip on/off, and 3 DIP switches to select the channel (so you can use up to 8).

I pulled one of the remotes apart and connected it to a microcontroller, which connects to the PC via USB. Then wrote a simple program to give me a GUI for my touchscreen, which talks to the microcontroller.

attachment.php


So, basically all I do is touch the bank of games I want, tell it to turn on... or tell it to turn them all on, which powers them all up a couple seconds apart, and same for shutting them down.

There is no feedback from the power strips to the remote, but it's not really a big deal to me. I make sure everything's shut down when I'm done down there anyway, and I wouldn't trust the feedback enough not to check.

I got them on Amazon for around $30 each, but Home Depot sells them as well (I think they're ~$40 there).

DogP
 
DogP, that is brilliant. You need to do a full writeup on that solution. I would be willing to pay you to assist me in getting this set up.

FWIW, I'm using X10. It gets the job done. But I still shut off the breaker(s) in my game room when I'm not using them.
 
Damn, I thought this thread was going to be about putting the Rockafire Explosion on top of your games.

P.S. Dog P is a genius!
 
Awesome DogP! That's pretty much what I was planning. I have a top view of my arcade built in Sketchup that I was going to modify to be the layout.

Looks like there is a build-your-own version of the powerswitch tail II. I ordered one of those and a prebuilt one. I'd like to be able to control each game individually instead of having banks.

http://www.powerswitchtail.com/Pages/PSTKKit.aspx

I need to figure out what microcontroller I'm going to use and how they are going to talk to each other and what is going to serve up the web page.

 
Could you not use something like an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, have it wired to some relays to power the machines on and off, and have it hooked wirelessly, thru wifi or XBee, to remotely on troll it thru an app??

You could I it with 1 device wired up to a bunch of relays I would think.

I think Raspberry Pi might be a good choice. I don't know much about XBee, so I should look into that now. At some point, some part of it needs to speak wifi to serve up a web page to whatever is connected to my wifi network.
 
I think Raspberry Pi might be a good choice. I don't know much about XBee, so I should look into that now. At some point, some part of it needs to speak wifi to serve up a web page to whatever is connected to my wifi network.

Get a wi-fi dongle for the Pi board to connect to your network. Then the Pi can serve the web pages itself. There is an XBee to USB module, so you could use that to connect the pi to the rest.

Good luck!
 
DogP, that is brilliant. You need to do a full writeup on that solution. I would be willing to pay you to assist me in getting this set up.

FWIW, I'm using X10. It gets the job done. But I still shut off the breaker(s) in my game room when I'm not using them.
There's not a whole lot to it... the program is something I threw together in a few hours using Visual Basic (I normally hate Visual Basic, but for something this simple, I couldn't pass up the simplicity). The microcontroller is a Parallax Propeller USB dev board, which has a USB to serial converter on board, and the software is simple to make it talk over the serial port, and controlling the remote is REALLY simple. Unfortunately I didn't take pics of the guts, but it just took a few wires from the MCU to the remote.

I'd be glad to help you set something like this up.

Awesome DogP! That's pretty much what I was planning. I have a top view of my arcade built in Sketchup that I was going to modify to be the layout.

Looks like there is a build-your-own version of the powerswitch tail II. I ordered one of those and a prebuilt one. I'd like to be able to control each game individually instead of having banks.

http://www.powerswitchtail.com/Pages/PSTKKit.aspx

I need to figure out what microcontroller I'm going to use and how they are going to talk to each other and what is going to serve up the web page.

I like the PowerSwitch Tail, but that's gonna be EXPENSIVE if you're switching ~50 games individually. The Raspberry Pi with WiFi would probably work well for this (more powerful than a small MCU, but still has GPIO easily accessible)... there are some quirks to the RPi though, especially w/ WiFi (unless they've finally worked them out in the latest rev). I assume you'd have one that's the master, and several others out there just to control power on/off? Or would you run wires from the one RPi to all the games?

XBee would be a good idea if you're gonna have a bunch of small MCUs doing the gruntwork of turning them on/off... they're really simple to interface with. For something like RPi to serve the webpage, which tells 5 Arduinos to turn on/off ports.

Another solution that might be a lot cheaper is to find used PDUs from server racks. I've interfaced an MCU to an AP7930 (over the console port), which has individual power outlet control. It also has Ethernet, so you could probably have the RPi control it through that as well (even using powerline Ethernet so you don't need any extra wires).

The problem with the 7930 is that it's only 20A for 24 outlets, which wouldn't work well for arcade games. The AP7900, AP7901 or AP7902 would be good though (15A for 8 ports, 20A for 8 ports, and 30A for 16 ports respectively). The 7901 is <$100 on ebay... and I believe all these PDUs have current monitoring, and you know they're good quality.

These would depend on your power situation though (did you run 12AWG and have 20A ports around your arcade), and do you have, or could you run any 30A outlets? Also, you need to be careful which model you get, since there are 110, 220, or three phase models... so you just need to make sure you get the right one.

I believe the 7900, 8600, and 8900 series all have individual outlet power control (you'd want to verify though). Here's a quick ref. guide w/ the model numbers, specs, etc: http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/JLAE-7DZLEC_R5_EN.pdf

DogP
 
We use these at work
http://www.digital-loggers.com/lpc.html
8 network enabled outlets.. web interface with api.
pretty sweet. $130 for 8 outlets, price goes down if you buy more.
cheers
/Tim

Those looks pretty darn cool. Looks mike it'll still cost me about the same as using the self-assembled powerswitch tail per machine. The only advantage I can think of to the powerswitch tail solution is that I wouldn't have to use a bunch of extension cords to plug games in anymore. Hmmmm. Not sure which way to go yet. I may do the work to get a couple powerswitch tails working with a couple machines and see how I like it.
 
There's not a whole lot to it... the program is something I threw together in a few hours using Visual Basic (I normally hate Visual Basic, but for something this simple, I couldn't pass up the simplicity). The microcontroller is a Parallax Propeller USB dev board, which has a USB to serial converter on board, and the software is simple to make it talk over the serial port, and controlling the remote is REALLY simple. Unfortunately I didn't take pics of the guts, but it just took a few wires from the MCU to the remote.

I'd be glad to help you set something like this up.


I like the PowerSwitch Tail, but that's gonna be EXPENSIVE if you're switching ~50 games individually. The Raspberry Pi with WiFi would probably work well for this (more powerful than a small MCU, but still has GPIO easily accessible)... there are some quirks to the RPi though, especially w/ WiFi (unless they've finally worked them out in the latest rev). I assume you'd have one that's the master, and several others out there just to control power on/off? Or would you run wires from the one RPi to all the games?

XBee would be a good idea if you're gonna have a bunch of small MCUs doing the gruntwork of turning them on/off... they're really simple to interface with. For something like RPi to serve the webpage, which tells 5 Arduinos to turn on/off ports.

Another solution that might be a lot cheaper is to find used PDUs from server racks. I've interfaced an MCU to an AP7930 (over the console port), which has individual power outlet control. It also has Ethernet, so you could probably have the RPi control it through that as well (even using powerline Ethernet so you don't need any extra wires).

The problem with the 7930 is that it's only 20A for 24 outlets, which wouldn't work well for arcade games. The AP7900, AP7901 or AP7902 would be good though (15A for 8 ports, 20A for 8 ports, and 30A for 16 ports respectively). The 7901 is <$100 on ebay... and I believe all these PDUs have current monitoring, and you know they're good quality.

These would depend on your power situation though (did you run 12AWG and have 20A ports around your arcade), and do you have, or could you run any 30A outlets? Also, you need to be careful which model you get, since there are 110, 220, or three phase models... so you just need to make sure you get the right one.

I believe the 7900, 8600, and 8900 series all have individual outlet power control (you'd want to verify though). Here's a quick ref. guide w/ the model numbers, specs, etc: http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/JLAE-7DZLEC_R5_EN.pdf

DogP

All arcade circuits are 20 amps I believe. I'm planning on using at least 2 microcontrollers since there are two major rooms of games that would be a pain to interconnect physically. I'll likely end up needing more depending on gpio limitations. The electrician is putting in a trough for low voltage control wires for this along with an external mounted wall-length wire mold power bar for each game to plug into.

I should get a raspberry pi to start with and see what I can get going with two powerswitch tails. Any idea if there is still a huge wait to get raspberry pi these days?

Those rack power supplies are great! I'll have to consider that if I don't get far with this other stuff. In kind of set on not running extension cords to machines and having them plug into the wall right behind them, so I may end up spending extra to do the powerswitch tail thing. Probably nuts. :)
 
This is what I use. They're $5-$8 at most thriftstores. Place one every 5 games, and distribute across multiple circuits. Label with blacklight reactive labels (black background, white text) and easy to flip the games on/off that you need.

I have 6 of them across my 22 vids + pin, one for each row.

$T2eC16NHJIIE9qTYI1YSBQzRqyivbw~~60_57.JPG
 
This is what I use. They're $5-$8 at most thriftstores. Place one every 5 games, and distribute across multiple circuits. Label with blacklight reactive labels (black background, white text) and easy to flip the games on/off that you need.

I have 6 of them across my 22 vids + pin, one for each row.

$T2eC16NHJIIE9qTYI1YSBQzRqyivbw~~60_57.JPG

I have a more expensive equivalent to this now. I'm looking for automation, not switch per outlet power strips.
 
Have you thought of using motorized breakers most company's make them and there not crazy expensive and you can set up a control panel any were to turn them on and off or if you want to get really fancy they can be controlled by an AMX system or Crestron. The older control systems for AMX can be picked up cheep on ebay
 
Back
Top Bottom