When I am at work, I use headphones; a lot. About half the time I am listening to music, the other half I am talking with someone on Lync (Skype for Business). That made it difficult for my colleagues to know whether I am available or not, so I get interrupted when I’m on the phone. I needed a way to communicate my availability!

About a year ago the girlfriend and I finally found a house and got settled in. It’s not huge; neither is the garden or the garage. But there was enough space for me to get my own room; a man cave, office, and workshop, all in one! I’m very happy with it, small spaces spike the creativity, and I’ve managed to fit pretty much everything I needed. It has taken me this long to get everything together and document it.

AVR is a series of microcontrollers from Atmel. Fitted with A/D converters, comparators, timers, interrupts, internal oscillator, and more. Flash memory is used for the main program, SDRAM for variables and EEPROM for values that need to be saved through a power loss. Cheap, fast and easy make them perfect for home automation projects.

Seasoning a humidor means getting it ready for cigars by saturating the wood with moisture, so that it no longer is hygroscopic.

Temperature sensor with serial RS-485 interface. Two additional sensors can be connected using 3-pin headers on the circuit board. Uses an AVR ATmega8 microcontroller.