How to Monitor a house

(Work in Progress)
In building sensor networks there are  2 main design patterns using either wired or wireless networks

Central System

Sensors connect to a central computer that handles all of the information.

Pro's

• Only one computer to program
• Data is gathered all in one place 
• Wireless: devices can sleep to save power when between gathering samples.
• Wireless: cheaper transmitters.

Con's

• If the computer crashes, no data can be gathered. 
• Wired: lots of wires, and the signal gets degraded the longer the cable is.
• Wireless: All the sensors have to be in range of the base station

Distributed
Pro's

• Each sensors has it's own microcomputer that logs the data 
• Data can be stored until it can be shared
• Less wires
• Network can withstand multiple device failures

Con's

• Complex
• Harder to program
• More hardware, More expensive 
• Wireless: modules can't sleep because they have to relay the messages of others.

My Plan

I plan on building a network that combines the strengths of both systems. Sensors in a house are often clustered together.  I plan on building a set of sensor hubs that are placed through out the house and are interconnected building a mesh network. Each hub can read multiple sensors and relay this data to it's neighbors. passing along messages until it reaches an output point.