Raspberry Pi Central Heating Controller Project

RE: Raspberry Pi Central Heating Controller Project

mcb1 — Mon, 23 May 2016 23:53:54 GMT

Nice project.

There are methods of improving your energy useage and surprisingly one is to reduce the temperature down while you are away ... NOT turn it off.

We went down this road with my parents who were shutting off their air con (heat source) when they went out, then having to run it for a much longer period at higher temperature when they came back home, and it was still just reaching the optimum when they went to bed.

I encouraged them to simply reduce it to the lowest setting when they went out and return it when they came home and the result was a huge improvement.

I solved the GPIO pin issue on the first PiFace by adding two single row strips.

Review of PiFace Digital

[View:/resized-image/__size/552x444/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b7da1310-0b04-4122-9fea-37bc18a4a4d5/7870.contentimage_5F00_181200.jpg:552:444]

but you easily just add the few needed to do the one wire connection.

It might be interesting to connect some EnOcean remote monitors into the system as we did in the Forget Me Not challenge.

Forget Me Not Challenge Competitors

[CaTS] ForgetMeNot - Week 3: Data persistence and charts with OpenHAB

Mark

RE: Raspberry Pi Central Heating Controller Project

rdibened — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 20:12:52 GMT

Liked your project. Planning to do something similar in the US. Luckily here the thermostats are pretty standard and easy to control with relays. I feel I can just close contact via a relay on the wires going directly to my heating and cooling system. I have a DHT22 Temp/Humidity Sensor that I will use to monitor the environment. I plan on controlling my heating, humidification (during the winter) and my AC during the summer. I also plan on leaving my existing thermostat connected as a fail safe and setting it a couple of degrees from the RPi set points. Doing this I can set a schedule on my RPi that is more granular than that of the thermostat. I might also incorporate the outdoor temp or the weather forecast to adjust the set points. I will probably publish what I do as you did. Good Job and thanks for posting this.

RE: Raspberry Pi Central Heating Controller Project

Nate1616 — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 14:06:10 GMT

Very nice project Matt. What kind of system to you use for cooling? Thermostats are very simple devices. You will have a common, 24VAC, Y(cooling system), W(Heating Sytem), G(fan), Rc, Rh for single stage units. With a dual stage you will add Y1, W1 and could also get contacts for heat pumps O(Valve), B(Valve), C. A nice additional would be adding a similar device to the unit itself to track when the filter needs changing, humidity, coil issues (plugged, low coolant, Frozen), Airflow, Air quality just to name a few. If you ever need any help with anything involving HVAC just let me know as I deal with this stuff on a daily basis with my job.[View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b7da1310-0b04-4122-9fea-37bc18a4a4d5/contentimage_5F00_3.png:16:16]

I found this Kickstarter project very interesting but when i sent them some questions they never responded so i didn't back the project. System Performance Technologies LLC - Home

Nate

RE: Raspberry Pi Central Heating Controller Project

gadget.iom — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 12:49:47 GMT

Nice article! [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b7da1310-0b04-4122-9fea-37bc18a4a4d5/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

Tempted to give this one a go myself. (I have a Towerchron QE1)

RE: Raspberry Pi Central Heating Controller Project

shabaz — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 12:20:13 GMT

Hi Matt,

This looks great!!! It is easy to forget how powerful it is to have deep insight into things like temperature, energy, lighting in a home, and

the daily historical records too. Otherwise we're throwing money out the door wasting energy.

The potential for gas and electricity cost savings is huge I suspect, for example one smart control vendor claims a 10-12% saving on the heating bill. This is a 2012 article on the average home heating bill, at that time it was close to £600:

Cost of heating a home rises by £230 in five years - Telegraph At the same rate (I couldn't find a more recent figure but I didn't look for very long) , that bill would be more than £900 (1300 USD) in 18 months from now.

Also, the web app looks very cool, are you planning to publish it when it is complete? I have a feeling we could learn a lot from examining your code to see how the experts do it..