f. Runo4 Home Safeguard Application

Runo4 Safeguard is an intelligent house presence simulator. It uses a house control microphone and a door sensor to detect a potential burglar when you are not at home. The application is activated with a wall button in the control panel. When activated it monitors your computer microphone. If the maximum sound level is exceeded the application randomly selects a sound recording and plays it. You must provide WAV files with short sound recordings to make a potential intruder at your door think that you are at home. The application would then randomly select an appropriate recording and play it to make him or her think that you are at home.

Record your common voice responses to door activity like ringing a door bell. Think of what you would say, if you were at home and you would like not to open the door. Make more than one different recordings to let the system randomly select a different recording each time there is a suspicious activity at your home door.

The recordings can also be ranked according to the Runo4 Safeguard application anxiety level. If you want a recording to be played only the potential intruder persists (like “Get lost, or a I’ll call the police!”), you mark the recording the recording with a certain higher anxiety lever or above. This would cause the Runo4 Safeguard system to always choose the appropriate recording.

You can also play with the lights. Runo4 Home Safeguard application can control lights (or more, if you alter the code. See the source code)

Runo4 Safeguard application has client server architecture and it can operate over intranet domain (local network). There are two EXE programs and two DDLs in Runo4 House Safeguard.zip archive file:

- Runo4.exe is the main application which monitors your computer microphone and plays sounds to simulate your presence at home.

- SVPIC18F2xJ50_TCP_IP v4.0.dll must be copied to the same folder as Runo4.exe. It is a client communication library that enables Runo4 to connect to the server application. The client and the server applications may be installed on the same or on different computers in your intranet.

- SVHomeControlCenter v3.2.exe is a server application, which controls your PIC18F2xJ50 relay control board. You can either build your own board based on basic PIC18F2xJ50 circuit, or use a Velleman K8055 or K8055N board.

- SVLIB_PIC18F24J50 v3.7.NET4.dll is PIC18F2xJ50 control library that must be copied in the same directory a SVHomeControlCenter v3.2.exe on the server computer. It enables the SV Home Control Center application to communicate to a PIC18F2xJ50 microcontroller via USB.

If you find it difficult to configure Runo4 Safeguard application, you may also copy RunoContext.txt file to the “c:\” root directory and the application will pick it up and get configured with the sample configuration. However the referenced WAV files are not provided. You will have to make your own recordings to simulate your presence at home.

There is one more thing to mention. Don’t forget to start the server application before starting Runo4.exe and don’t forget to open the firewalls on client and server computers. You can only omit setting the firewall, if you install the server and the client application on the same computer. It is also important to note that .NET framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2010 redistributable pack must be installed. Please, see subsections 7.a and 7.b on installing the prerequisites on your Windows.

Please, go to Downloads section to get Runo4 Home Safeguard Application.zip that includes the files mentioned above. If you would like to experiment on your own, get Runo4 House Safeguard source files.zip ZIP archive with source files for Visual Studio 2010.

Click on the screenshot to enlarge it.