Heating Controller - Help advice needed

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Frequently-Asked Questions
1

Hi

I am looking at creating a stand alone heating controller maybe with SMS control such as like the Heatmiser Netmonitor +

I am new to the Arduino and would like to know if such a thing could be achieved. I would like the unit to be stand alone so that I can access it direct from the internet without any need for a computer to be running.

Does the Arduino have a number of static pages I can use, if so how and what do I program them in/with?

Thanks for your help.

2

Well that makes two of us. In fact it was the desire to do this which led me to discover the Arduino (and what a wonderful thing it is). I'm a complete electronics virgin and so am (ahem) working my way up from the bottom. I'd be very interested to hear of your plans, but my thinking so far is:

  • I plan to control the heating simply by remote on/off switching of the boiler via the web.- It seems that the boiler can be switched via a 240v connection linked to the existing boiler control. Switching this should therefore be possible by adding a parallel switched circuit.
  • This should be possible via a relay, controlled by the Arduino.- The Arduino should be controllable via the web via an ethernet shield. I think this will require me setting up the shield as a server and my initial understanding is I should then be able to access the ethernet server via a browser (but I'm getting out of my depth here). The Arduino certainly works stand-alone and my understanding is the Ethernet Shield should also (albeit connected to the Arduino) and therefore can be linked directly to my router with no need for a PC to be left running- My ISP uses dynamic DNS, therefore I'm I think I'm going to have to configure my router to use a dynamic dns service such as dyndns.com (I can't post a live link on my first post. Fair enough, though I can assure you I'm not a spam bot)

That's as far as I've got, though I am busy learning the basics of sketch writing and understanding electronic components (all new to me). I apologise if that's all very basic stuff. I'd be very interested to hear whether your plans are similar, to hear how you get on and to learn of any great ways you find to do this (or good links for learning). Apologies also to the forum that I've not spent to long searching on this topic (yet) on this forum, though believe me it's taken me not a few hours just to establish what I've outlined above. Don't worry, I will, but meanwhile any pointers would be very welcome.

3

So we are three... i do not need it for a heating control with warm water heating but for a thermal storage heater system which needs a PWM-Output of approx. 10s period time and floating average and wether prognosis... :wink:

I'm also new in arduino but i had worked in former times (some 25 years ago) with some 6805 and 8051 series.

Ro

4

I'm part way through a SmartStat intelligent thermostat project at the moment.

It uses an arduino and 5 x 1wire temp sensors to read the temperature at 5 heights on my hot water cylinder and displays them on an LCD.
It also tells me how many showers can be expected based on the sensor readings (calibration achieved through our experience).

It also has the ability for the user to request a certain number of showers, it will then close a relay which simulates the cylinder stat closing and requesting hot water from the boiler

I'm planning to add a clock to it and also the ability to set a simple program (1 on and 1 off but could be expanded)

I'm not bothering with ethernet communication as i intend it to be a standalone device, but my experience with this project may help some of you.

5

I am planning to do the same by wiring an Arduino with Ethernet Shield into a Heatmiser control system.

I think the hardest part is getting the Arduino to talk to communicate through the Heatmiser Protocol. I am in the process of trying to achieve this at the moment: http://aglasspool.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/arduino-heatmiser-via-rs485/

If anyone is interested on collaborating on this, please do drop me a line.