The intellistrip idea has grown to a full automation stack. But, that's going to built out in another project. For now, we've got to get a reasonable thing going via a web interface. To that end, everything will use javascript and stuff like that.
well, the ksh will stay, because hey - if it ain't broke don't fix it. But the ksh doesn't do a full web interface all biz-bang jizzy jam, the way JS and her friends do. So, it's time for me to enter the modern world.
The world longs for dashboards, graphs and pretty pictures (as well as kittens). So, nodejs with express.js, ws.js, influxdb, later.js & moment.js (our scheduler), and bonescript will give us the backend, while the front end is yet to be determined. Of course, being part of the Internet of Things (IoT), we'll have an influxdb instance for historical data analysis & configuration storage, websockets for pub/sub data access & integration, as well as real-time stats updates with grafana.
I'm working on a final design for some hardware - a BBB cape - that will have everything needed for an environmental control system, plus some things not needed. To date, several PWM to 0-10v control chips (for dimming modern fans, leds, or other tech hi-jacked from the Building Control folks), a Relay control input, inputs for temp/rh sensors, light intensity sensors, and well, just sensors in general.
The default hardware apart from the Beagle Bone, are things like the DS18B20 water proof temperature sensor, the DHT22 temp & RH sensor, TC4427 Mosfet Gate Drivers for 0-10v PWM controls (EC Fans, LEDs, motors, etc.), among others. I've got an ugly prototype shield that will basically be "supported". More support will come through updates, etc. There's also a project underway to provide a nodejs "device manager" kind of thing that can be used. This will facilitate more components all working together.
Also a nifty little beast. However, I've set my sights on the BBB (which might have been a bad idea, but it has all the stuff for the stuff we need. If you're going to use an R-Pi, you'll have to get some PWM generators, an Analog-Digital-Converter chip, etc. Also, depending on what version of the Pi you're using, you might even have to get an I/O port expander of some sort. The newer Pi2 and Pi3 should have enough pins for an 8 port power switch, as well as for the sensors.
There's a lot of movement in the ARM computing world right now and things like the BananaPi, pcDuino, intel Edison and others are available with an OS on top. There's no reason (technically speaking) that this shouldn't work with them. My only reasons are: cash flow (they get expensive after a while), and effort. Most of this should just work on any linux implementation with whatever library access to the device layer. For example, currently, the dht22 sensor is accessed via Adafruit's python drivers which work for both pi and bbb. Intellistrip just calls the script which outputs a JSON object.
the goal is to use it for winter gardens, green houses, aquariums, beer/wine brewing, or other automation projects.
It requires ksh, which you can install via apt-get install ksh.