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Nest and opensource alternatives.
01-24-2014, 12:06 AM,
#1
Nest and opensource alternatives.
I recently bought a house in Spokane Valley after having rented for the last few years. I had a programmable thermostat at the old place but now, in my own home, I wanted something more advanced. I ended up going with a touch screen Honeywell, but even that was a compromise from what I really wanted. A while back I saw Google bought nest, and it got me thinking again.

For reference
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/01/a...o-crop-up/

Even the most advanced thermostats seem to be pretty dumb. Something as simple as "how often the circulation fan runs" seems to be missing from many. Even those with the feature generally have a "circulate once in a while" instead of a "circulate this many minutes, this often" setting. For example, mine runs about 35% of the time on the circulate setting.

We have a double split house, meaning 4 floors, about half a story from each other. This means the top bedroom, and downstairs office can have a significant temperature differential depending on how frequently the circulation fan runs. This is more important to me now, as I work from home full time, and work in the basement.

It seems to me that a thermostat could be a fairly simple combination of sensors tied together with an Arduino, with a bunch of conditions built in.

The sky's the limit when dreaming, so forgive me if I get carried away.

Our house has a radon air exchange system, which I understand is somewhat rare, however it allows a little more flexibility with my ideas.

Some basic goals would be

All of the generally accepted niceties of a thermostat.

Remote room temperature sensors. When the temperature between room A and room Z are more then X degrees apart, run the circulation fan till they match (or X minutes, or whatever is effective).

Air exchange/attic fan (mostly during summer months). If the temperature outside is higher then the temperature inside run the air exchange instead of the A/C till it reaches X tolerance.

Humidity sensor. Run A/C till humidity reaches X.

Those are my thoughts for now, will revisit tomorrow.
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