Advanced Heating Controls
Published on 8 Dec 2009 at 8:22 am.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
From earlier deliberations and measurements it had become clear that there are savings to be made in heating a typical suburban property. This is because the bolier controls are usually quite crude. In our case we have a 3 year old condensing boiler. The air temperature is controlled by a thermostat which would have to be adjusted daily for optimum efficiency. If not the house is either too hot or too cold depending on the outside temperature.
The thermostat works as intended. However, if the outside temperature is rising the thermostat can’t anticipate the effect of this on the inside temperature.
Some fancy kit is available to compensate for this but it’s expensive and I thought it would be more interesting to rig something up, given the fact that I already have remote-controllable sockets and a continuous stream of temperature data.
Controlling the boiler is easy. I used a byebyestandby socket plus a relay to produce an isolated contact pair as required by the boiler’s control system. I left the existing thermostat in the circuit, generously set. The existing timer is set to always on for heating. Hot water is unaffected by these changes.
For the moment I am using a BBSB “online controller”. However, the Arduino that looks after the sensors could just as well do this job if and when I get round to reprogramming it. At time of writing the Arduino has been running for many months whereas the BBSB has fallen over a couple of times. I may get round to that reprogramming job sooner than I expected.
To control this in line with our requirements I have a simple program on the server which wakes up every so often and checks the time settings and the temperature inside and out. As appropriate, it can send commands to the BBSB socket to turn the boiler on and off.
As the settings are held on the server I can control them from any browser, including the one on my phone.
I shall be observing gas consumption to see whether this produces the expected savings. My family will be monitoring comfort levels and I know I won’t need an extra jumper for Christmas.
Home Networking with 433Mhz RF
Published on 17 Sep 2009 at 8:04 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under Uncategorized.
We seem to use quite a few low-cost wirelessly connected devices around the home. When thinking about how to realise my smart thermostat project I realised that it should connect to the boiler in the same manner as the current dumb thermostat, at least until some better technology with the right price point comes along.
Many of these devices use 433 Mhz and have undocumented proprietary protocols. Nevertheless, the price of these devices is right so I thought I would try to reverse engineer some of them, starting with the existing thermostat and an outside thermometer.
First step was to get some RF modules. I chose the Radiometrix ones as the supplier is nearby and user-friendly. Thx to Peter at the OHH meetup I knew to use a sound card and Audacity as a recording ’scope to see whet we’re dealing with. Next I wil convert the manchester-encoded stream and log a bunch of readings. From there I hope to be able to guess the protocol.
Along the way I found someone else doing this. See Bertrik’s site for details.
Once I’ve crossed that bridge I’ll hook up a transmitter and see if I can drive the boiler relay. Initially a simple arduino program will be sufficient to create a dumb theremostat. After that I’ll move on to optimisation taking into account internal and external temperature gradients.
If all goes well I can achieve another reduction in energy for heating without reducing comfort for the family.
Why don’t I just buy an optimising thermostat? I’ve tried to and failed so far to find anything at a reasonable price.
Open Hardware Meetup
Published on 9 Sep 2009 at 9:14 am.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
As I’m going along to this London meetup tomorrow, I’m posting some notes on how I plan to go forward with home automation. After the session I’ll make some more notes here.
BRE Innovation Park
Published on 5 Sep 2009 at 9:09 am.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
I’ve been trying for some time to get a pilot off the ground to see if others can obtain the same energy savings, particularly gas, that we have achieved using detailed monitoring. The Innovation Park at the Buildings Research Establishment was suggested to me and I was fortunate to meet Mike Perry who has been very much involved with this initiative.
The park is well work a visit anyway, especially if you plan to get involved in a new build or major rennovation project. However, I’m going to pick up on just two points here:
1. Monitoring is part of a much bigger picture that includes energy management, telecare, home entertainment etc. MP stressed the need for standards in this area. Widescale adoption of proprietary protocols around the home and community will make it very hard to get the full range of benefits economically. As with mainstream IT, good standards will permit the involvement of many innovators. Whilst it did happen in IT, it is unliikely that a single vendor’s proprietary will become sufficiently dominant to be considered “open”.
2. Gas, though important now, is not in most people’s thinking because it is expected to run out in the not-too-distant future. I wonder about this prediction given recent investment in pipelines from Norway and Russia. I don’t know the figures but I reckon there are millions of UK homes that will use gas until the price really does go through the roof. Solar hot water would have the effect of prolonging this.
OK, so I did not advance my grail quest but it certainly was interesting. I’m getting more and more interested in new build and this throws up a lot of ideas worth thinking about even if some of them, like complete airtightness, do not appeal at this time.
The quest continues: how can we get pulse outputs on existing gas meter installations? A second private meter in series seems to be the only solution.
Homecamp April 09
Published on 26 Apr 2009 at 7:02 am.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
Another great day out with the homecampers, kindly hosted at Bash and organised and sponsored by various worthies including @yelllowpark (he of the t-shirt) and @monkchips.
An unconference but not really? Who cares - it worked.
My own take-aways (no particular order):
- Streaming via ustream - I think this is the right link
- Hooking up to projector - cable issues
- Reactiongrid - (incoming) sound issues
- Incoming presenter - (outgoing) sound issues
- Currentcost - some discussion with Martin about protocol/ handshake. He’s generously offered another piece of kit.
- Joe Begley house c/o http://www.greenenergyoptions.co.uk/ very cool solution and possibility of free trial
- Gave my little talk on what I’ve done so far and where I want to take it
- AMEE fairly focussed in what they do (watts) but could be hooked up via pachube
- Ask jamieandrews about leak detection
- Possible use of commercial flow meters for water (may be complications). Various products at Farnell. Despite suggestion nothing useful on Brita either.
- Pachube have atom format. Need to develop an app to get 4 traces on graph.Can fix my broken interface by adding min/max to EML.
- dopplr have something to help reduce travel energy costs (tripit too?)
- Onzo developing smart energy kit for later this year.
- Flukso have done some great stuff with their box (built inside a wifi router) and analysis software http://www.flukso.net/. Need correct URL for company.
- Need to look at http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/ data logging and graphing system for time series data.
- Checkout Arduino mega http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega
- Also look at alt microcontrollers that (will) run linux so we don’t have to develop and RT/OS and rewrite drivers for arduino.
- Useful input from @folknology on microcontrollers - check out his OHH and the ARM-based http://beagleboard.org/. (Later @ohh there was talk of creating an even better board.)
- Some work at Oxford on power signatures??
- Reactiongrid seems like a very useful alternative VE for education. Minimal talk on this.
- http://redcatco.com/ 6 factors in influencing outcomes
- Pity I missed Techcrunch’s Geeknrolla
- Need to discuss structure of homecamp wiki with @yellowpark. Should have separate registration so we get fewer trivial updates and have pages for each meeting plus resources and applications plus links to people profiles if poss. Can’t offer to do this yet but maybe later.
This is a draft. To be corrected.
Combined Gas and Electricity Monitor
Published on 28 Feb 2009 at 10:52 am.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
I have been working with a nice electricity device called CurrentCost to see if I could combine it with my gas monitor. This is proceeding but a little slowly because of some specification issues. Anyway, just as I thought I was getting there came a total distraction: the arrival of a new electricity meter from Landis + Gyr (see pic). This is not a “smart meter” as such but it’s a pretty useful device given that it has an LED indicator with a strong and clean pulse representing 1/1000 kWh. An LDR is easily taped over this indicator and fed into a microcontroller.
Excuse the scruffy taping job. I’ll think of a nicer way to hold it in place. A key feature is the opaque tape (not visible in pic) to maximise the contrast and therefore the input voltage swing.
This is now plugged into the same Arduino that’s watching my gas consumption and the software is modified appropriately. The device keeps track of the readings and sends updates periodically to the server over the Internet. The server can then, on demand, produce a record of what’s been consumed and how much we’ve spent. Once we build up a few months’ history our patterns of consumption should be clear so we can also see the broader trends and better refine our usage.
The use of power at night is a known problem since we (foolishly) allowed electric underfloor heating to be installed in part of our extension. At the moment we’re on a single tariff for electricity and this is costing about 9p/KWh. Iwill now do some more accurate sums to see if we should be on a dual tariff.
The other thoughts I’ve had all along with this project are to benchmark our consumption against those of comparable properties and also to invest in (even) more insulation and airtighting.
To facilitate that I need to finish the design (e.g. to add external temperature and re-calibrate the internal temp which is over-reading). Then I’ll see about building more robust prototypes for others to use. Let’s see what time allows. PS. Ext. temperature added (image replaced).
Online Forums (sic)
Published on 13 Feb 2009 at 12:16 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
I think I’ve almost got used to the use of an English plural on a Latin word. Now where was I? Oh yes, Bulletin Boards, Discussion Boards or whatever.
In theory these should be major tools for collaborative organisations such as associations and charities, especially now that “Web 2.0″ is de rigeur for presidential campaigns. However, not that many associations are using Forums and some of those that are would admit that they function more as a broadcast medium than as an interactive tool.
There are many tools out there. I’ll only mention vBulletin and phpBB here but they are numerous as stand-alone tools and can also be found embedded within other tools such as Content Management Systems like Joomla! and Drupal.
If you are considering adopting one of these tools or even just evaluating them for a pilot project here are some of the considerations that may be relevant:
- Reliability - this is a combination of professional hosting and a great support community. The more popular offerings generally have the best support behind them. Volunteer support is often as good or better than its commercial counterpart. A combination of the two is ideal.
- Usability - this is of course very subjective so you will want to evaluate a few to see when you like.
- Functionality is becoming less important as most of the available tools will do the job. Many features such as the ability to adapt the look and feel are generally avaialable. Watch out for features such as topic threading and see mention of integration below.
- Look and feel/ branding - most of the available tools can be “skinned” with your logo, colours etc and there are plenty of off the shelf themes that you can at least use as a starting point. However, in order to properly match your branding you will usually need to have a custom skin produced. This need not be expensive.
- Security - assuming professional hosting your information will be safe. There are many ways to control access to individual parts of a forum. Good discipline on passwords is important unless you are using some more powerful method of authentication. A number of products have plugin authenticaion options.
- Integration - this could be a deciding factor as many of these products suffer from a lack of integration options. This means that you could need to replicate information about contacts and groups that are already held in other systems, creating a maintenance problem. In a project we are currently doing for a leading trade association we needed a single database to determine access control to their members’ website and associated forums. To minimise developmant and maintenance costs we chose a forum with a separable authentication system.
So. We haven’t gone as far as to recommend a specific tool because the best choice will depend on your existing installation. Hopefully the above will at least help you to make an appropriate choice. Should you need any help with that please let us know.
Meeting Schedulers
Published on 11 Feb 2009 at 3:13 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
I’m not on many committees these days but I well remember the problem of scheduling meetings, whether face to face or by phone, video, IM or whatever.
Inside an organisation there are some obvious options such as provided within Outlook. However, it’s increasingly outside an organisation where the real challenge lies. It cannot be assumed that a single piece of infrastructure is shared by participants and, even if technically possible, there would be insurmountable security barriers.
So tools like Meetomatic and Agreeadate promise to fill an increasing need. There are several of these so one should also consider Timebridge, Timetomeet, Tungle, Jiffle, Doodle and probably others.
These are all web-based tools that operate outside your organisation. The key functions include sending invitations out and collating and presenting the responses so that you can pick the best date and time for a given meeting. Additional features such as updating your personal or corporate calendar are useful.
The main drawback of this approach relates to the time it takes to get responses back before the dates offered have been booked for something else. It would be useful if responses could be prioritised somehow, such as by setting your filters to mark these messages urgent. Each tool has it’s own take on this.
There’s also the question of which medium to use with some people having mobile email and others relying on SMS for urgent messages. This should be flexible if possible. (NB. Twitter decided it could not afford to use SMS in the UK; suppliers of free tools might take the same view.)
As with any new online system there will be a learning period. My colleague David reminds me that patience is required while people recognise how this kind of tool must be used if the expected benefits are to be realised..
Obviously these schedulers have a relationship to other group collaboration tools and this is where they could give us a very pleasant surprise by providing integration points. Say that you have a group set up for a given committee. At the moment it would typically be necessary to set up profiles for the members of this committee in each of several collaboration tools such as for document sharing, project management etc. When any contact detail changes you would need to visit all these systems to change your settings. Some software makers are beginning to respond by building tools that can share profile data. That will be welcome. Let’s hope!
CurrentCost Electricity Usage Monitor
Published on 11 Feb 2009 at 2:25 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
Got the device yesterday. It seems very well put together and has a serial digital output (although I don’t yet have the cable for it). There’s a wiki at currentcost.wetpaint.com with information about this. Compared to the OWL, two other differences are immediately obvious. The OWL came with a handy bracket for wall mounting whereas CC has a sticky patch. Given that the wall in question is bare brick (in the meter cupboard) this is a nuisance - a managable one. Second and more serious the CurrentCost has runs on plug-in power not batteries. Both devices are otherwise wireless so you can measure from where any appliance is situated and flick the switch to see the power that device is consuming. However, that’s easier with a battery-operated unit. So I’m going to keep both units, one for its output and the other for its mobility. More on this when I get the serial data hooked up to monitoring central.
PS. That wiki has some confusing info on it. There have been various versions of the CC unit with different serial output specs. I have made a few comments there.
Expensive Sunday
Published on 9 Feb 2009 at 7:57 am.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
Family here yesterday so I had to let the bolier kick in around mid-day. Not such a cold day so the house reached target temperature quite quickly. Out in the evening (at James McMurtry gig) but it was chilly - could nevertheless have left it off for an hour or two. Need to add external temp measurement and find where all that heat is going!
