Home heating control automation

Projects Made with Cayenne
1

About This Project

As an English man living in the UK, I live in a tropical climate (not!)
So only having a combination heating unit which supplies hot water (on demand) and heating controlled by a wireless thermostat and depending on the room it placed in controls the temp in that house,
problems with this system.

Wireless control looses signal all the time.

each room has different sized radiators that produce different amounts of heat with a thermostatic valve .

during the colder months heating is on 24/7 wasting energy (wasting my bloody money)

What’s Connected

raspberry B+
16ch relay board (using 2 relays)
4xDS18B20
3,3v to 5v conversion board made with 14.7Ohm resister ,2N 3904 transistor and number of scraps and second hand parts

Triggers & Alerts

Using the DS18B20 in each room to setup a min and max temperature in each room to trigger a secondary relay.

Scheduling

I have set 2 schedules 1st schedule that triggers a primary relay on and a 2nd schedule to trigger it off.
##How it works

I have linked two relays in series so the heating will only run if both relays are closed,
so if the primary scheduling relay is set to close between 18.00h and 06.00h the heating will only switch on if the secondary relay trigger point has been reached (temp below 17deg C in one of the rooms )

Dashboard Screenshots
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this is the over view so I can monitor each room temp and adjust each radiator thermostat to balance temp in the house.

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easy peasy timer set up using the daily repeat

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these are the triggers for the rooms max and min

Photos of the Project

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the 2 relays wired in series
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4x 1 wire DS18B20 ready one for each zone

##Ideas for the future
motorised valves on each of the radiators so I can adjust each one.
wall mounted display to have quick and easy access to controls and monitoring.
notification alarm when the wife even thinks about turning the heating up. (or even a small electric shock if she touches the controls :smiling_imp:)

9 Likes
2

Hey @4ndy,

Good to see you around here again! What a good project too. Let me know if you manage the small electric shock bit, I think many of us in the community could benefit from such a feature :wink:

There is a project submission contest going on right now for the month of October, if you submit your project to Hackster.io & Instructables.com then you will get a $50 participation prize and your project will be entered for the $200 grand prize :slight_smile:
Submit Your Cayenne Projects! [contest ended]

-B

3

Had to abandon the electric shock ideas it would have saved on heating but it would cost me a fortune to get a new cleaner :speak_no_evil:

4

…and I’m still saving up my $50 just to participate!

5

I’m curious why you need $50 to participate? From previous posts it sounds like you have everything you would need to come up with a project!

6

@adam
I make the thingies
that allow other people
to make IoT projects.
-a R/C switch isn’t really a project…
a PC board with 4 power relays isn’t really a project…
I just want to make WiFi R/C as TEENY as possible,
to allow the IoT device to be placed INSIDE other devices.
…whatever the IoT application is- is irrelevant to me.
The “I’m saving up my $50”- is just a lighthearted joke. :wink:
-After having spent over $5K on electronic designs! (last year alone) :scream:

-but, on the bright side-
I am AWASH in IoT PC boards,
for Pi Zero, Pi3, Esp12e.
I have a pile of I/O boards!

7

Extremely kewl!
I like your “double relay” solution to the trigger problem. Nicely done!

Yes, it could as well be connected to a radiant-heat floor solenoid valve (the radiator pipes are poured into 2" thick flooring concrete), and- the individual zones can be controlled independently- from different WiFi thermostat sensors.
or, it could be connected to a forced-air heating VAV (Variable Air Velocity)- basically, an electric controlled 8" airflow damper. To turn the heated airflow on or off. If you have a 2-stage “forced air” heater, you can turn off unused rooms, and heat only where you want it.

Efficient.
Very efficient! Very kewl!

Make it fit inside (several) wall thermostat enclosures, in different zones…

-put a Esp12-e WiFi into one of these puppies…
in each room.

8

Ye being able to use schedule and trigger on the same relay like a logic gate is grate and I will be using the same sort of logic on my lights (just waiting for a slow boat from China to finish the unit.)
Stay tuned for my next project post :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Cool little open and close value but I was looking for something with a bit more control like an actuator and hopefully there will be a widget to control it so as cayenne grows my home automation can grow with it.

1 Like
9

I scrounge old clothes washer machines for the valves. Not many clothes washers use +12Vdc valves! :wink:

10

Man after my own hart the I do love trying to find or make things out of scrap

11

here you go birthday boy
Home Automated Heating Control - Hackster.io control&offset=4
Heating Control Using Raspberry Pi and Cayenne App : 3 Steps (with Pictures) - Instructables
hope you have had a good day

12

Haha, just saw this project. Really creative, and all to stop “wasting my bloody money.” :slight_smile:

13

At the grand old age of 36 a wife 2 kids (that I now adout) I can only give this advice if you if you don’t like wasting money don’t get married :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

1 Like
14

Ahh, using 2 relays. One for time and one for the temperature, why did i not think of that. Thanks for a simple solution to my problem.

15

Nice One. How did your prepare DS18B20 without metal enclosure.?

16

With lots of cash and hours of work lol.
Nice and easy just pushed some female jumpers on the pins and heat wrap to hold it all together.
I have coving in most of my rooms so the plan is to find some harf spheres (like a spoon) and clip the sensor in with some heat paste.

17

Hi @uk.jezz
What problem are you working on ?
Always interesting to see little issues being resolved.

18

Simply turning the Central heating on only at set times and temperatures. I Tested it out on my Pi3, and all worked well, but for some reason i could not get Cayenne to work on my Pi2. Not to sure if it is because i already had an older version of webiopi installed.