Ruby in my Yard!

Look, I know you love your sprinkler timer, with its endearing little dials and simple, easy-to-use interface, and its killer dot-matrix LCD.

We thought we could do better, and we thought Ruby could help us. With the awesomeness of things like the Raspberry Pi and maybe a little Arduino, who's to say I can't use Ruby to water my lawn, remind me to fertilize, or let me know where I could save a little water?

We’ll take you on a quick tour of the automated sprinkler system world and the problems it has, and how we’re solving them with Ruby, Raspberry Pi, and about 24V of DC power. We promise not to electrocute you, but we can’t guarantee you won’t get a little bit wet.

Transcript

1. Ruby in my Yard! Corey Woodcox  cwoodcox  cwoodcox  corey.woodcox@gmail.com
2. Ruby in my Yard! Corey Woodcox  cwoodcox  cwoodcox  corey.woodcox@gmail.com
3. OC Tanner Company
4. OC Tanner Company Ruby on Rails
5. OC Tanner Company Automated Testing
6. OC Tanner Company AngularJS
7. OC Tanner Company Heroku
8. OC Tanner Company GitHub
9. OC Tanner Company Continuous Deployment (10+ a day)
10. OC Tanner Company Totally awesome sauce
11. I have exactly ZERO experience in electronics engineering
13. Well then, WHY?
14. Home automation is awesome
15. Home automation is fun
16. Home automation is easy
17. Home automation is freaking useful
18. Home automation is my secret love
19. Home automation is my secret love
20. Home automation is my secret love
21. Home automation is my secret love exactly not It’s a
22. I’m an extraordinarily lazy person
23. I like it when things are easy
24. I like it when things are simple
25. I like it when things are fast
26. I like it when things get out of my way
28. easy
29. simple
30. fast
31. stays out of the way
32. pic of current timer here
33. clunky
34. annoying
35. ridiculously slow
36. old
37. Don’t worry. Things have improved... right?
38. Not exactly.
39. Not exactly.
40. Not exactly.
41. If Rails is Omakase
42. If Rails is Omakase I don’t wanna know what this is
43. So how do I set this thing up exactly?
44. Simple, really.
45. Simple, really. Just watch the 10 minute instructional DVD that came with your system.
46. I don’t know if you can tell...
47. I don’t know if you can tell... I HATE this approach
48. Reasonable defaults will suit most people
49. There are some things that I shouldn’t have to do
50. The time of day is readily available with a network connection
51. The device location is readily available with a network connection
52. The device location is readily available with a network connection or better yet, a smartphone
53. Current weather is readily available with a network connection
54. All we’re doing is switching 24 VAC on and off. Easy!
55. Okay, let’s go wire up an Arduino!
56. Okay, let’s go wire up an Arduino! NOPE.
57. Arduino = C
58. Arduino = C C isn’t fun.
59. Arduino = C C isn’t fun. Ruby is fun! okay, well it kinda is...
60. This could be made so much easier with Linux
61. This could be made so much easier with Ruby
62. This could be made so much easier with Raspberry Pi
63. Raspberry Pi has many advantages
64. Raspberry Pi has many advantages Even if it is a little OP for this.
65. Networking for FREE!
66. Networking for FREE! Arduino needs modules and stuff
67. It’s a UNIX system...
68. It’s a UNIX system... I know this!
69. We get Ubuntu
70. We get Native Ruby
71. We get NTPd
72. We get UNIX sockets
73. We get everything we love from Linux
74. We get everything we love from Linux And it only costs 6 seconds of boot
75. Austin Vance
76. Austin Vance Developer at Pivotal Labs
77. Arduino the Ruby Way RubyConf 2012
78. Arduino is great for small, repetitive tasks
79. Arduino is great for reading sensors
80. Arduino is great for regulating and normalizing I/O
81. Arduino is great for responding to output from a computer
82. Arduino is fairly limited when it’s isolated
83. Arduino works best when paired with a computer
84. We could use a Raspberry Pi to control an Arduino
85. FOR GREAT JUSTICE!
87. Do I have a working example of this?
88. Do I have a working example of this? Not exactly.
89. Do I have a working example?
90. Do I have a working example? Indeed!
91. By jove! How can I build one of these things?!
92. With a shopping list of course! coreywoodcox.com/sprinklers
93. Thanks! Corey Woodcox  cwoodcox  cwoodcox  corey.woodcox@gmail.com