Purchase experience with Simple Labs

I have been having this itch to work on a home automation project for a long time. And finally the day has come to scratch the itch. I have been putting off this idea for a while and it is high time I did something about it. So as a first step I at least wanted to get the basic electronic components. Perhaps staring them long enough would finally motivate me to do the project. I wanted to start off on a very simple setup.

Basically, get a proximity sensor to detect if there are people in the room, talk to a light sensor and see if we need to turn on the lights, talk to a temperature sensor to see if we need to turn on the fan and do the necessary based on the sensors' response. To interface with these sensors I wanted to use an arduino board, which I have been wanting for a while now. The list comes down to

1. Arduino board
2. Proximity, light and temperature sensors
3. Relays to turn on/off lights and fans

I searched for the stuff online and found these 2 online stores (in India) that met my requirements.

• Simple Labs
• Probots

I would have preferred to use Simple Labs for all my components because of the simpler purchase flow, but unfortunately I could not find any relays on Simple Labs. Anyway long story short, I ordered an Indian version of the arduino board called InduinoX and a quick start kit. I ordered it on Wednesday afternoon, the whole process was simple. I got an email in a couple hours that the package was dispatched through courier. I got the package the very next day! I really loved my shopping experience on Simple Labs. Recommend it strongly. Here are the contents of the package for reference.

I also ordered the relays from Probots the same day, but did not receive the package yet. So more about that purchase experience in my next blog.