Qik
SVG house
Animations, events
.NET console app with timer, console, scheduler...
Tecomat Foxtrot
I'm planing a smart home and in Czechia we are quite spoiled for choice: Control4, Domotron, Fibaro, Haidy, iNELS, Jablotron, Loxone and more, but I like Tecomat Foxtrot 2 from Czech company Teco the most and I'm not alone – some of those companies I mentioned use Foxtrots as well.
The central module is basically an industrial PLC, that Teco has been manufacturing for almost three decades. It uses TCL2 and CIB bus lines to connect up to 32 modules per controller. It also supports other protocols, like Modbus, TCP/IP, UPD/IP or BACnet. Teco claims Foxtrot aims to be as compatible as possible, which is exactly the approach I was looking for.
The central module in its second generation is equipped with two RJ45 for two independent networks, USB host and USB client ports, SD card slot (when the internal memory is not enough), and a slot for 4G/LTE modem.
For programming the PLC there is “Mosaic” IDE, which supports different programming styles, like graphical “CFC” (interconnected blocks) or Pascal-like “ST”. Mosaic contains a lot of additional features, like designer for GUIs (which run on embedded web server) for your control panels and browsers.
Tecomat Foxtrot CP-2000 – central module for (not only) smart homes
Of course, all of this come at a price... of price :-) I consider the central module itself quite reasonably priced for about €600/$700, but afterwards every stupid CIB input device (= mostly buttons and sensors) is like €100-200/$115-230 per piece.
Anyway, it should be no problem to integrate it with Qik and even add some program support for Foxtrot into it.
Qik
At home we use several apps: Wunderlist for shopping, Dropbox for file sharing, shared calendars, custom bookcase manager I wrote over a decade ago and we often use our own websites for notes or cooking recipes.
There are tons of cool stuff you can do with recipes, with proper data pool, of course. It can suggest meals to cook, considering recent meals. You can look for a meal according to ingredients you have. You can cap those meals by calories or require certain dietetic restrictions.
You can create a weekly dishes and calculate efficient grocery shopping for required ingredients. The main limitation is managing the data, which I'm currently working on, but sadly without much success.
It would need RFID chip on products, because scanning EAN can add or remove the product to/from stock or show you relevant info, like nutrition facts (fetched for it from from a database), but doesn't give you expiration date of the particular food item.
You can take a picture of the date and use OCR, but on e.g. some PET bottles it's very hard to read and it's necessary to do it both times, that is when storing as well as when retrieving (to sign away the correct item).
Qik Logo
There are also many other things the family could share, like contacts, business hours, schedules, copies of receipts and invoices, stock of toiletries or cleaning products or even food expiry dates for long-term products.
I don't really see anybody keeping an eye on food expiration dates, it just requires too much effort. This is a task for AI/ML, but that's a story for another day.
And more good news, some modules from Quid are compatible with Qik.