Check out this Raspberry Pi sensor network project from Medic for Life, built around Adafruit’s BMP085 Barometric Pressure/Temperature/Altitude Sensor:
I’ve wanted to do something like this since I first started playing with microprocessors. The idea of an inexpensive, distributed sensor network throughout the house is really cool. In Hollywood we always see someone sitting at their computer console accessing their security system. It’s typically a wire-frame display with sensors all over the place. They’re getting all kinds of data, and even providing the occasional remote output (displays, lights or sirens, etc).
The $35 Raspberry Pi is almost the ideal basis for this kind of sensor network. It runs a (relatively) well developed Linux distribution. It has two USB ports, runs on 5v, sports an ethernet port, and will support almost any video display out there. More importantly, it has several exposed general purpose I/O pins and supports I2C.
I’m using Lady Ada’s Occidentalis distro. So far it has been incredibly stable (though it swaps between video outputs if I cut power to the system). I’m using this distro because there are examples using Python to access the various GPIO’s and the I2C.
Featured Adafruit Tutorials!
Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro: Adafruit <3 Raspberry Pi – especially how easy it is to hack circuits using the electronics breakout pins! But sadly, the latest official distro “July 15 Raspbian Wheezy” did not have many of the delicious hackables built in. That’s why we decided to roll our own distribution. Our distro is based on “Wheezy” but comes with hardware SPI, I2C, one wire, and WiFi support for our wifi adapters. It also has some things to make overall hacking easier such sshd on startup (with key generation on first boot) and Bonjour (so you can simply ssh raspberrypi.local from any computer on the local network) (read more).
For other Raspberry Pi Learning System tutorials, visit here!
Featured Adafruit Products!
BMP085 Barometric Pressure/Temperature/Altitude Sensor- 5V ready: This precision sensor from Bosch is the best low-cost sensing solution for measuring barometric pressure and temperature. Because pressure changes with altitude you can also use it as an altimeter! The sensor is soldered onto a PCB with a 3.3V regulator, I2C level shifter and pull-up resistors on the I2C pins. NEW! We now have a fully 5V compliant version of this board – a 3.3V regulator and a i2c level shifter circuit is included so you can use this sensor safely with 5V logic and power. (read more)
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.
Want a FREE RASPBERRY PI? All orders over $350 get a FREE Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM!