Glyn from OpenEnergyMonitor surprised me pleasantly the other day by sending me an emonGLCD unit to evaluate – thanks! Building it was easy, and an hour later I had it working. Quite nice piece of hardware, a must-have for home monitoring and automation projects. I will be doing customizations in the future and make blog posts…
Here is a small project with some potential in home automation. I had an idea to create a script, that would track my (and not only) location and use that information to make decisions for home automation. Some ideas: Climate control: Turn down heating a bit when I am some distance away from home and…
I have been researching these days on the possibilities to use ultra low power sources for the Funky sensor. I started my research with the idea to power a Funky from a CT wrapped around a power line. This is entirely possible, and there are commercial products that utilize this idea, but then during my…
There is quite some buzz in the RFM12B community recently on low power remote receiver nodes, these are remote, battery-operated nodes that would listen for incoming commands and react to them. The challenge is that keeping the RFM12B powered on all the time eats battery like cheese. There are few ideas floating on how to address that…
I would typically think of a boost regulator in the case when I’d like to step-up voltage, and such were my intentions when I introduced the LTC3525 boost regulator chip on the Funky sensor. The idea was to be able to power the Funky from a single AA/AAA batery, and the LTC3525 would simply provide steady…
Earlier this year I purchased a 220l non-pressurized evacuated tube solar heater and installed it myself on my rooftop. It is a relatively cheap (~440 Euro) solution for domestic hot water. I chose the non-pressurized type because of its simplicity and relative safety in case of overheating. Also, it does not require additional pumps, cold…
Apart from the pathetic etching job on the PCB I described yesterday, I found out this morning that I also managed to etch the kitchen sink and made wife unhappy. It have been warned not to pour ferric tri-chloride in it, but few drops seem to have found their way. I drilled the holes today…
When I was building my house, I had to figure what to use for heating/cooling plus a hot domestic water solution. I came to think that the best for my case is to use a heat pump. The advantages are obvious – a heat pump moves heat/cold using somewhere up to ¼ of the electricity…
One of the things that has been quite annoying about my Daikin heat pump converted to air-water system, is the defrosting algorithm, or is it better to say the lack of defrost algorithm. Basically below 5 degrees Celsius it defrosts every 45 minutes of accumulated compressor run time on my system, not considering if it…