Building a Home Security System With Beaglebone Paperback – December 31, 2013

Look at the cover. If you can solder components onto a silkscreened base to build a board like this, this book is for you.It covers just about everything else: sensors, actuators, code, and light carpentry.

Good book, a great way to get started into the home automation addition!

It is an okay book. It delivers exactly what it promises. No more, no less.

Got my security system up and running in a short while.

First ImpressionsDisclaimer: I recognized the author as a frequent participant on the BeagleBoard mailing list. Packt Publishing provided me with a copy of this book in order to do this review.This is a very short book. The nine chapters comprise a mere 88 pages. It seemed odd that such a short book had five technical reviewers.What this book is aboutThe first two chapters in the book cover the basics of alarm systems and a very simple single zone alarm system. The third chapter discusses planning for an alarm system installation.Chapters 4 and 5 are about building and testing hardware. Several printed circuit boards (PCB) are presented in these chapters.Chapter 6 covers automation. Chapters 7 and 8 provide ideas on using the BeagleBone to monitor your home networks as the alarm system functionality doesn't even come close to tapping out the capacity of the BeagleBone. The final chapter mentions some additions that could be made to your alaram system such as RFID readers, fingerprint scanners, etc.Who is this book for?If you are and experienced electronics hobbyist with some knowledge of Javascript contemplating building a security system this could be a good book for you. A lot of electronics is assumed in this book. None of the circuit components are explained with the exception of comparators which are briefly discussed and related to op-amps which are not covered at all. Transistors, etc. just appear in circuits.The book also seems to assume the reader is familiar with PCB manufacturing. The appropriate files are provided to etch your own PCBs, but unless I missed it there are no pre-made boards available. Wiring harnesses are shown and other than a tip to use needlenose pliers instead of an expensive crimping tool no direction is given on how to build these.If you understood what I said in the two paragraphs above, you will probably be fine with this book. Having never build a security system myself, I definitely learned a few things reading this book.Who the book is NOT forIf you have never built any electronics before or are just getting started in electronics this is probably not the book for you. I suspect you will be frustrated by a lack of fundamental electronics knowledge. I would be much less concerned if Javascript is new to you, but you have some background in electronics.If you are also interested in home automation, you might be OK if you read the BeagleBone Home Automation book by Juha Lumme (also reviewed here on my blog[...]) first to get some background before reading this book. Alternatively, some of the Make electronics books or similar might be helpful.Book Link at Packt[...]

Disclaimer: I was given a reviewer's copy of 'Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone'. The fact that I was given a copy of this book has in no way influenced my review.Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone by Bill Pretty was a fun book to read.Bill starts out by giving a quick overview of alarm system sensors: passive infrared, glass break and temperature and then walks you through building a simple alarm.Chapters 3 and 4 walk you through planning how to layout your system, build the hardware and writing some software to control it.Chapters 5 and 6 take you through testing and automating the system.In chapters 7 and 8, Bill gives a solution that will allow you to use the built system to also go through an protect your home's computer network.The book concludes with a chapter that gives ideas on devices that could be added on such as a fingerprint scanner or RFID reads.Even though I might never actually build my own home security system, it was interesting to see how the BeagleBone can be used to run this type of system.

Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone provides a compact overview of the basic components, wiring, function and secure implementation of an Internet-connected intrusion alarm using one of my favourite open source hardware platforms. As a newcomer to home security I definitely learned a thing or two about how such systems work. Taking into consideration the short length of this book, Bill Pretty managed to pack in a surprising amount of details and some serious knowledge. Disclosure: I'm a founder of Yaler, a relay service mentioned in this book. - Thomas Amberg (@tamberg)