Wednesday 29 June 2016

Metpi #3: software

For the software side of the Metpi, I wanted to do two things:
- Log the data with the other pis from the Radpi system.
- Publish the data to the Weather Underground platform.

Metpi #1: genesys

I've been using Wu (Weather Underground) for a while to get local weather readings (temperature, humidity, wind, etc). With all the Raspberry pis in the house, I thought I'd use one to measure weather data at home.

Thursday 16 June 2016

Radpi #4: boiler control

With the ability to control the boiler remotely and the temperature sensor data stored in a database, I could start adjusting the temperature in the house.

Radpi #3: temperature

Once I could control the boiler, I could turn my attention to reading and storing the temperature coming from the various Raspberry pis in the house.

Radpi #2: boiler

The first step of the Radpi project was to figure out how to control the boiler. I knew I could switch on/off the boiler with a wemo wifi socket (connected to a wifi repeater due to the thickness of the walls and the distance to the main AP; one of the joys of 150 year old houses). I assumed I could figure out how to control the wemo without using my phone and then use that to control the boiler from a Raspberry pi.

Radpi #1: genesys

After the carpi project, the number of Raspberry pis in the house increased to the point where I nearly had one per room performing one of more tasks (TV boxes, wifi AP, network balancers to deal with the fact that we have both ADSL and satellite internet). Overtime, I wondered what I could use them for since they weren't doing much most of the time.

As our heating system doesn't have a thermostat (it relies entirely on the temperature of the water coming back to the boiler from the radiator circuit; needless to say it's vague and hard to control accurately), I though that maybe if I could know the temperature in each room I could manage it better. The Radpi project was born.