Cubrix5000Control v. 1.1

[Dansk Version]

Cubrix5000Control is a program for controlling a Cubrix 5000 Alarm/Relay unit over the GSM net. The program has been implemented in c# and executes on a smart phone with Windows Mobile. The Cubrix 5000 unit, typically placed in e.g. a summer house, is a kind of cell phone that by way of SMS messages sent from your cell phone/smart phone activates/deactivates four alarm sensors and turns four relays on and off (for controlling electric heaters, light etc., see Fig. 1-2). In principle, the four alarm sensors and the four relays constitute two independent systems.

fig 1 fig 2
Fig. 1-2 (click to enlarge)

The user interface on your smart phone is accessed either by means of a touch screen (Fig. 3) or through a menu controlled by standard buttons (Fig. 4). The user interface maintains the state of the Cubrix 5000 unit, i.e. shows if the alarms and the four relays are on or off.

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Fig. 3-4

Personally, I use the system for 1) turning on the alarm when we leave our summer house, 2) turning on electric heaters about 10 hours before we arrive at the summer house, and 3) turning off alarms and heaters when we arrive at the summer house (then we use our wood burning stove).

Alarm System

With one exception, the alarm sensors constitute a system independent of the relays: When an alarm sensor is triggered, it will - beyond sending an SMS to your smart phone - turn on the relay at port no. 4. In other words, the Cubrix5000 system presupposes that e.g. an alarm siren has been connected to relay no. 4 (see also Fig. 3).

The Cubrix 5000 system is shipped with three sensors: Two infrared sensors at port 1-2 and a built-in sensor reacting to power loss at port no. 4 (in that case the internal backup battery will supply the unit with power). Port no. 3 is idle and can be connected to any standard alarm sensor including a row of such sensors connected in a series. The user interface on your smart phone shows which ports have sensors connected (Fig. 5). Sensors can be "disconnected" in software (preventing them from sending SMS messages when triggered) and alarm texts can be edited.

fig 5
Fig. 5

Relays

The Cubrix 5000 system supplies the relays with 12 volt DC. With a little bit of "creative thinking" they can easily be connected to the 240 volt AC system: A so-called PC power saver (Fig. 6) has been designed to be triggered by the 5 volt DC from a USB port of a PC. With a voltage regulator regulating 12 volt DC down to 5 volt, the power saver can be connected to the Cubrix 5000 system. Any standard Car Plug-In Charger for a cell phone (Fig. 7) has built in such a regulator.

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Fig. 6-7

A PC power saver has been designed to a maximum watt consumption of 2000-2500. Hence, only one electric heater can be connected to a power saver. Two heaters presuppose two PC power savers/two voltage regulators/two ports.

Set up

The set-up on the smart phone needs only three pieces of information: 1) The GSM number of the Cubrix 5000 unit, 2) its master code ("password"), and 3) the GSM number of the smart phone (Fig. 8):

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Fig. 8

Once supplied with this information, the program on the smart phone will synchronize with the Cubrix 5000 system, that is take care that the state of alarms and relays shown on the user interface corresponds to that of the Cubrix 5000 system.

Before being set up with correct GSM numbers, the program on the smart phone executes in a simulating mode. This enables the user to get confident with the program without sending a lot of SMS messages back and forth between the smart phone and the Cubrix 5000 system. The program is for free, and users can on their own responsibility use it for any non-commercial purpose.

Version 1.2. only differs from version 1.1 by allowing users to disable message-interception (that makes the program wait for the SMS responses from the Cubrix unit before updating its state). Disabling is neccessary in some very special cases: 1) Some other programs utilizing message-interception leave a registry clutter behind that prevents "decent" programs from reading incoming messages (see details). 2) HTC Touch HD2 (and maybe other smart phones as well) has an own application to send and receive SMS messages. This application also prevents other programs from intercepting messages.

Version 1.1 only slightly differs from version 1.0. Mainly small modifications have been made to the source code to make it compile under Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. The previous version can be downloaded here: