UniPi Is A Powerful Board That Can Control Your Smart Home

In the near future we will all live in smart homes. Our doors will open automatically, our air conditioners will know when we are too hot, and our toilets will understand our deepest needs. And the device to tie everything together? The Unipi.

Created by a pair of Czech engineers, Adam Škorpík and Tomas Hora, the UniPi connects to a Raspberry Pi and includes eight relays for turning on and off appliances, lights, and HVAC systems. It also has digital and analog inputs for temperature control and a real-time clock that keeps the time even when the system goes down. It costs $149 and is compatible with the Raspberry Pi B and B+.

Why do you need this? Well, it’s great for home automation experimentation and it looks like a solid piece of hardware. The Indiegogo page doesn’t include very many specific details on the API but as long as you can interact with the sensors and the relays in real time I could see this as a very useful little tool.

The team has already surpassed their somewhat meagre goal of 3,000 euro so it will most probably be built. Now all we need is a bio-sensor for our toilet drains connect to an Arduino and we’ll have the ultimate in smart home/internal-biome technology.