Control heaters through web interface

[paalkr]

Hi

I have temperature and humidity sensors inn house rooms (even cold storage, fridge and freezer), the all send signals to my Tellstick Duo. Currently I'm using SwitchKing to control the heating schedules, turning on and off floor heating and room heating, based on outside temperature, time of day, room temperature and floor temperature. The system works pretty well under normal circumstances and operation, but overriding the normal setup is a complete pain. There is no easy way I can e.g. rise the temperature in a room by 2 degrees for a certain period.

I'm a little familiar with EventGhost and have written some python scripts to calculate rain statistics from my Oregon PCR800, sending data to SwitchKing through the REST API. But I'm looking for a different solution than SwitchKing, preferable using EventGhost as the prime engine in the system. I after a solution that can
* Schedule normal automatic day to day operations, by creating rules based on various sensors and a time scheduler
* Provide some nice web pages to view current temperatures and heater status.
* Be able to easily trough a nice looking web page be able to override normal schedule and temperature settings
* Provide nice looking weather statistics trough web pages
* Android tablet and phone optimized web pages
* And of course wife friendly

Thanks for any suggestions! I'm not afraid of scripting and configuring the system at a pretty low level to achieve my goals, that's half the fun

Regards,
PK

[krambriw]

Hello,
In EvenGhost you have support for many types of equipment like your TellStick Duo. There are schedulers and other "rule making" plugins available.

What is currently missing, I think, is a rule engine for climate data like temperature and others. Thats why I just started to write a new plugin that will be able to generate events based on defined conditions. Right now it is only handling rain sensor data but my plan is to develop it further to cover temperature, humidity, light levels etc.

To present and control I would recommend using web sockets, it works on windows, android, ios.

Lets see what this brings in the future. My home automation system has been controlled by EventGhost since many years now and it is very flexible and new things are being developed continuosly.

[kkl]

Thats why I just started to write a new plugin...

Walter,
That's great news. I have a Micasaverde Vera Z-wave Home Automation controller (lights, appliances, thermostats) and several WIFI thermostats. If I could help out by testing hardware you don't have, I would love to do that.
Kerry

[paalkr]

Hello,
In EvenGhost you have support for many types of equipment like your TellStick Duo. There are schedulers and other "rule making" plugins available.

What is currently missing, I think, is a rule engine for climate data like temperature and others. Thats why I just started to write a new plugin that will be able to generate events based on defined conditions. Right now it is only handling rain sensor data but my plan is to develop it further to cover temperature, humidity, light levels etc.

To present and control I would recommend using web sockets, it works on windows, android, ios.

Lets see what this brings in the future. My home automation system has been controlled by EventGhost since many years now and it is very flexible and new things are being developed continuosly.

Hi

Thanks! I have noticed you effort in developing the Climate plugin, interesting stuff! Do you have any suggestions regarding which schedulers and rule making plugins?
My most important requirement is to be able to easily set up a web site where I can override the default timers, schedules and temperature settings for my heaters. This means that the rules and timers set by the plugins in EventGhost must be changeable from a web site.

Second, any suggestions regarding templates for creating a web site that can display room temperatures (I don't need a floor plan), display current schedules for heating and overide the above mentioned parameters?

Regards,
PK

[krambriw]

The design ideas I have for the moment for the plugin is in summary

Individually per sensor:
- data collection and storage (sqlite3) of sensor data at a defined interval (every 1-x minutes)
- average calculations (short and long moving average)
- actions to request stored data
- actions with definition of calculation of rules (less than, greater than, equal to, hysteris etc)
- functionality to override to allow manual control
- etc

Typical use cases that I think of
- temperature based rules to control heaters on/off
- humidity based rules to control fans on/off
- rain based rules to control garden watering systems
- light level based rules to control lighting and shutters/awnings

Imagine you are measuring the temperature in a room in your house and the set point level is 22 degrees. If you would use the short and long moving average values, assuming they are set differently, you could get an event to turn on the heater when the short moving average is below the set point. Once the long moving average reaches the set point, another event can be used to turn off the heaters. Alternatively you use only the hysteresis setting to get a functionality that responds faster to temperature changes...

I also have in mind to leverage on already existing plugins. If you want to schedule the functionality you should be able to use the SchedulGhost to enable/disable macros. In this case calculation of rules can be controlled when they shall happen.

For presentation & manual control I am myself using web pages with web-sockets. It will be difficult to create a template since this is where you normally personalize heavily. But it will be possible to make a sample that includes and demonstrates the functionality.

Best regards, Walter