When you are a maker and you’re in a relationship, you may recognize this situation: you build something you find ground-breaking, impressive, and easy-to-use but your partner says, “Ugh! What an ugly set up! Put it away, I will never use it.” I have heard this so many times! Wife-acceptance-test failed and wife-acceptance-factor of the invention too low. Which means it does get put away.

Okay, if you are a female maker, it might be the husband-acceptance-factor, or if you like it more gender-generic it would be the spouse- or partner-acceptance-factor. However, I use it to describe the things makers build and love that are not accepted by our loved ones (usually for very good reasons).

So maybe your partner is right but you are still a bit excited by the fact that you finished a project and it — more or less — does what you expect. Maybe, when time goes by and you turn to new projects you may also think “Well, the usability of this heating control/light scene console/environmental monitoring system is indeed a bit poor.”

Whenever you build something, especially when it is intended to be used by other people, it’s important to take such a failed partner-acceptance-test as an important hint to work on the usability/stability/availability of the stuff you build.

One of my projects that passed the test is a light scene control system. I have many 433MHz controlled power outlets to switch more or less all lights (except the ceiling lights) in the house. My whole family can use it via a NodeRed UI app on a smartphone, an old iPad I screwed onto the wall, or via a simple switch near the front door. It works fine, is usable by the whole family, and, moreover, it is useful since the NodeRed app switches on lights at sunset when no one is in the house.

WARNING: In this project, I played around with mains power. Do not attempt to duplicate this project without the help of an electrician or extensive electrical experience yourself. This article exists for the sake of interest to show what I created and to encourage readers to see different ways to explore automation.

Troubleshooting the Light Automation System

Unfortunately, one day, the Raspberry Pi running the NodeRed app passes by in smoke and it was not possible to switch these lights any more. Of course, I had a backup of the software created using dd directly from the SD card but no spare Raspberry Pi.

Immediately the wife-acceptance-factor dropped to zero, because what good is a light scene control system when it doesn’t work at all?

Wouldn’t it be great if some basic functions are still available when a central component of the system fails? At least I would have been able to switch on the light. So, in my future projects, I will consider the usability and availability a bit more.

Modbus Master for Raspberry Pi

The next project was a Modbus master based on a Raspberry Pi.