Home/Heating monitoring and automation

[tsh]

Apologies if this is already discussed somewhere else - I thought I'd seen some posts, but can't find them now. Could well have been on another forum...


Basic idea is to improve on the control mechanism for my heat pump which thinks I want very hot water 24/7, get better logging of efficiency and add remote access - nothing too exciting and maybe a little trivial for a pandora - but it's some hardware i have to hand and might fit in quite well with a scalable project that also runs on a Raspbery Pi or similar. Weather station and other functions would be simple to add too.


Not wanting to duplicate any software work that has already been started (particularly since I'm not an apps coder)...


Kind of like the idea of a pandora stuck on the wall as a control terminal for the house.


Hardware wise, i'm starting with a 8-way USB data acquisition board (one-wire temperature sensors) since I'm too lazy to buld this sort of thing from scratch...


http://www.audon.co.uk/usb_multi/dlpio8.html

 

[dreamer]

Kind of like the idea of a pandora stuck on the wall as a control terminal for the house.

This seems waaaaay overpriced to me.


Even a RasPi would be relatively overpowered, but would make more sense (and is more economically friendly).


Just add small lcd-screen or character display, some buttons. What more do you need?


Imo it's a waste to use a Pandora for something like this (you don't need the nubs/game controlls, battery, audio etc.).


But sure, if you really want to.


There's plenty of home automation projects out there, but you'll probably end up at some arduino board.


The problem with the board you linked to is that it's probably not usb2, so you'll need a usb-hub in between.


(it's pretty expensive too)


The whole project just seems really out of proportion and not suitable for a Pandora at all

 

[Stephane Hockenhull]

Kind of like the idea of a pandora stuck on the wall as a control terminal for the house.

for 1/6 the price you can buy a cheap rooted Android tablet from china, you'll get USB host and OTG port, better WiFi, bigger touch screen, BT, MicroSD card slot, battery, SIM slot (works as a cellphone too).


all for around 100$ shipping included.

 

[Stephane Hockenhull]

and that USB data acquisition thing is way too expensive


http://www.dealextreme.com/p/arduino-nano-v3-0-81877?item=22


$16 USD, free shipping


more IO, more features and the controller can do a good part of the automation on its own.

 

[tsh]

for 1/6 the price you can buy a cheap rooted Android tablet from china

True, but for me that would mean an extra $100, since I already have a pandora.


I guess what this means is that most pandora owners have other dev ideas, or are really more focused on gaming and things that allow them to use the pandora to its full potential!

 

[dreamer]

I think virtually all pandora owners see their pandora as a portable device/computer etc.


It's pretty useless to glue it to a wall and never bring it anywhere.


You are rendering things like the awesome batterylife useless.

 

[WorldTripping]

Have a look at a Nanode, an Arduino type clone that you build yourself. It costs £20.


http://wiki.london.h.../Project:Nanode


It's Ethernet enabled and you could easily add a small LCD and a few sensors to it and get data transmitted to wherever you wanted.


Also have a look at Pachube (now COSM).


https://cosm.com/?pa...e_redirect=true


It takes the raw data from things like the Nanode and lets you interact with them in a browser.


There are also plenty of Weather Stations and Data Logging projects out there you can pilfer ideas and code from.


EDIT:


Forgot to mention that you can get all of the components for an Arduino for £7.50 if you want to build it yourself.


http://www.oomlout.co.uk/component-bundle-for-arduino-compatible-arcb-p-227.html?zenid=c9507eee19c6dea23f3d392b5c2890e5

 

[tsh]

I went for one of these:


http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/lpc1769-lpcxpresso-board-p-581.html


Should be able to handle most of what I need hardware wise, I hope.