Re: The 2 biggest things in HA never talked about

[ian.bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hi Gareth

I took a very simple approach to automating my heating. It needed to be
removable and more important understandable.

After some research I simply removed the thermostat and inserted a relay
which is controlled by HV via a TX15B X10 thermostat. This gives me
programmed control of the heating and RF boosting from bed so WAF (wife
acceptance factor) was high. The only thing I didn't do was optoisolate the
switching current (12v) from the normal heating voltage of 230. It hasn't
given me any problems after several years of use though.

I use a TX15B for temperature sensing but this is beginning to give
problems by continually setting the setpoint very low (must be faulty I
guess) and I cannot afford another one so I am building a better
replacement. This will do temperature and humidity and probably be able to
hold schedules etc. It will also be able to behave as a menu based
controller for the other automated aspects of the house - mainly because it
is the same hardware as my menu controller, just different programming. At
the moment it will communicate with HV via a PC but at the end of the day I
want to remove this dependence on a PC so will build another interface,
maybe RS485, MSS100 or serial. We shall see.

Thanks

Ian






Gareth Cook
<g@xxxxxxx>           To:       ukha_d@xxxxxxx
cc:       (bcc: Ian Bird/CV/Novartis)
20/12/2004 16:00         Subject:  [ukha_d] The 2 biggest things in HA
never talked about
Please respond to
ukha_d







1. Cable management. This is a bloody nightmare (I'll leave that for now!)

2. Heating Control. Now this is the interesting one. I know everyone will
prob have a different system, but there must be a basic list of what you
can do. Assuming you have Comfort or HomeVision (or any other 12v trigger
system), could we come up with a list of some ways of controlling the
heating system ?

Starting with the basics - you have a heating system with a timer etc -
how do you automate an override switch ? For example, on my system you can
press the heating button to kick in the heating regardless of the time
plan. This is a prime target for automating, where it can either be
scheduled or indeed activated over the phone (for Comfort).

I'm assuming that even different systems have a basic similarity for
power, neutral, and "request for activation" (if thats the
correct
terminology). So, if I obtain the wiring diagram for the system, the next
question is WHAT relay and WHICH feed does this go in parallel with ?

G.

Gareth Cook
SWG EMEA North Account Manager
IBM SWG - BTE Office - Lotus Park, Staines, TW18 3AG
Office: +44 (0)1784 445166 - Mobile: +44 (0)7980 445166
AIM Chat : TheBoyG - MSN Chat : chat@xxxxxxx
email: g@xxxxxxx



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