lifmo

First I though, oh why not include a animation and fancy little pictures. Or Video? Naa use Lottie for animations.
Such a waste of time. In the end i kept it simple, with a little text, icons and CallToActions. Unfortunatley only in German. Aaaaand the real domain is still missing. But still, Landing page is done.

Btw, I used Gatsby, Tailwind and CapsuleCRM. All hosted on vercel.

Lifmo

Since Akas is my first prototype, it includes a simple structure and only basic features. Some rules and add-ons of Webthings allow for advanced rules. Such as scheduling lighting only to nightime, captureing both flanks of the sensor, and sending requests to an REST API.

1. The "architecture" consists of a conbee stick and a rcwl-0516 connected to a reaspberry pi 4. This pi runs Webthings (Docker) and CouchDb (Docker). Webthings manages the Zigbee network and the rules. RCWL-0516 is wired to a GPIO.

2. The light turns on if the sensor detects motion and if it is nightime only.

3. The bulb's brightness increases if motion is detected. Furthermore a request is sent to a database and a timer of 10 seconds is started.

4. The bulb's brightness decreases if no motion is detected and the 10 seconds of the timer elapsed. A internal counter is increased and the timer is reseted.

5. The buld turns of if daytime is reached and if the light is still on.

In the next days, I need to figure out a way to block detection on the "back" of the sensor.

Hence I am going to work with customers on a personal level in the beginning, and selling the actual product takes a few interactions with the customer, a CRM system is a must have. It documents all the interactions between lifmo and all customers. A simple sales funnel of Attention, Interest, Desire and Action helps to keep an eye on the leads.

CapsuleCRM is simple yet powerful and free to use when the sales team is still small. One drawback is that capsule doesn't feature a product catalog. But it is powerful in getting information from the customer, storing relevant emails and track relevant projects.

Now it's time to find the customer data and utilize it to test Akas.

I wanna introduce Akas. The first MVP in this whole Lifmo journey. Prototypes need cool names, so I went on a website that list fictionary names for planets. Here is Akas. The BOM for Akas sofar is: a Raspberry Pi Zero W, Micro SD 16GB, RCWL-0516, Micro USB Poer Supply and a Conbee2. Plus a custom housing I need to make in near future.
Who will be the first customer?

There are moments, when you are just flashed, how simple things fall into place. I cought myself thinking: "This is it? That's all it takes?" Well apparently Mozilla's WebThings supports GPIOs in an eay manner. So hooking up the sensor, btw it is the first time ever I hooked up a "raw" sensor, was done. Maybe 30 minutes research on the sensor and the outputs and power supply and there we are.
There is a new sensor that detects motion and that is usable to talk to my zigbee bulb. The MVP is almost ready for its housing.

My room is now equipped with a zigbee network, that is powered by a Conbee 2 stick attached to a raspberry pi. The gateway is powered by Moziall's Webthings software. Part one (or the easy 50% of a MVP) are done. I can utilize my phone or computer to control a zigbee light bulb. Amazing. :)

Somehow I was wondering about Home Automation and its core existance. Cause just having it for fun or out of laziness is quiet lame reasoning. One aspect is saving engery. But how much energy do you really save with smart lights? Almost none. So where do you save enery? Right, light is turned on when there is movement aroudn your house.
So why not ignite the lights in public spaces when there is movement? Here we gooooo ...