I’ve received what may be the job opportunity of a lifetime, so my project has been put on hold while I pack up and move back to Ann Arbor. On the up side, I did get my first set of data out of the 3dsip program. Motor driver is up and running with microstepping that can be configured via the UI. Scanning works (mostly) but calibration hasn’t been set up yet. Currently the data is coming out distorted, which I expected.
In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about something I want to do at my new house (and the spousal unit agrees it’s a good idea). I’ve been unhappy with the way my furnace/air conditioner heats/cools the house unevenly. The rooms farthest from the unit get the worst performance. It is not so bad in my current house since the unit is centrally located, but I’m still not happy with it. In particular, most days my wife works from home and is basically only in her office. Either she can be uncomfortable or we can heat the entire house. A space heater works okay, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of the kids rooms not getting as warm/cool as the rest of the house.
What I’ve wanted to do for a while was to set up some home automation to solve the problem. I already have a server I use for file sharing & media serving throughout the house. I’d like to go with something like openHAB. I figure I can use either stepper motors or servos to open/close simple dampers in the duct work. The plan would be to return the dampers to the normally open position at the end of a cycle. Basically heat/cool with all dampers open until the first room hits its set point. Then close that damper. Iterate through until all rooms have been brought to the correct temperatures.
To keep in mind: Some minimal number of dampers may need to be open at all time so there is not excessive back pressure on the blower.
Also, each room will need a thermometer. I was trying to figure out how to do this in a way that is effective, doesn’t rely on batteries, and looks good. I’ve basically narrowed it down to two options: Raspberry Pi Zero or C.H.I.P.
The thing I like about the Pi Zero is all the support. I also like to buy things from Adafruit whenever I can. To get the Pi Zero up, I’ll also need to add in some wifi such as the Red Bear IoT pHAT. Slightly cheaper may be to go with a HUZZAH board. On the other hand, I really appreciate the open source aspect of CHIP.
With either board, I just need to add a simple temperature sensor and write some code to get the data back to the server.
How will I make it look good? I’m going to embed it in a radio! We have a sonos speaker in one room and we really like the convenience & sound quality. There is a major drawback in that there is no easy way to run airtunes to it. Right now I’m running it through airsonos running on my server. I’d prefer something with slightly better performance. I’ve found airsonos often needs restarting and the lag is annoying.
By switching to the Pi/CHIP option, I can run shairport directly on the board and output it to the sonos or an amplifier. I particularly like this idea because I have some very nice Polk Audio speakers that will soon not be hooked up to my TV in the new place. For the cost of a quality two channel amplifier I can put some great sound into every room in the house. I just need to make sure the temperature sensor is not affected by the heat from the amplifier.
The other software component that needs to run is either Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. The good people at The Next Thing company shows how you can turn a pringles can into an Amazon Echo (sort of). Google reports they will soon run on a variety of devices, including the Pi. Once I get a chance to compare the two, there may be an obvious winner. It would be great to expand the service to have lights/blinds adjust to voice commands. We’re living in the future!
Pretty sweet plans. Now I’ve only got about a hundred things to do before I can start on them. I wanted to put my ideas out there so I can refer back to them once I get to the project. Maybe the Pi Zero will even be replaced by something with WiFi at that point.
Tim Saucer 