Newbie here and not sure which forum to put this in so will start here. We have a window mount evaporative cooler with remote control for System on/off, Pump on/off and fan low/high. It works OK, but sometimes it gets too cold and needs to be turned off for an hour. But, the poorly design system needs the remote directly in front and a max of about 7-feet, so I may as well just use the buttons on the unit itself.
I tried using a plug in thermostat, but the system will not start when power is applied. Probably to prevent false-starts after a power outage. Well, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt anyway, so the thermostat turns the cooler off at the low temp, but when it is time to turn back on, it reapplies power but the cooler will not start without a button press. To be fair, it does remember the last settings for Pump and Fan speed.
OK, getting a little long, but I am thinking of cutting into the lines to the fan and the pump and take control of them and ignoring the remote system.
I saw some videos on Youtube for Arduino home automation, so here I am and before reinventing the wheel, I thought I'd ask has it been done? I want to have inside and outside humidity and temp sensors as the cooler does not work at higher humidity levels and needs to be shut down.
I am a retired programmer and OK with building electronics but not so good at designing circuits. So, first question is, is there anything like this I can copy or extend?
If not, I am thinking an Arduino, two humidity/temp sensors, maybe a real time clock as I may later program it for Winter Summer etc and an 8-relay board. I like lots of relays for possible future additions.
Second thoughts...
Since thinking about the above, I have wondered about using the IR and getting the Arduino to send to an IR-Tx glued over the cooler IR-Rx. The current remote is pretty useless having to be so close and directly in front, so no big deal covering up the built in IR-Rx.
I need to record the output for each button press on the remote then have the Arduino replicate them. The first problem I see with that is the fan-speed button has three consecutive presses.
1 - Fan off
2 - Fan high
3 - Fan Low
then cycle-repeats 1,2,3 so I doubt the signal for that button is coded individually. The Arduino would need to track what status it is. There are 2-LEDs for the fan state, so maybe I would need to monitor those.
Both off = no fan
Top on, bottom off = Low fan
Bottom on, top off = high fan
Since the cooler controller remembers that last setting at turn off, I could probably live with the Arduino remembering where it was too. If they get out of synch with a power outage or something I can reset them both manually.
But, I am still OK with the original thoughts about cutting into the hard wiring for pump, system and fan if that's the better approach.
Suggestions please, for where to get started with this?
Thanks In advance.