that's what i thought... i keep meaning to get around to making a few of these to monitor the house + feed back the data to somewhere.... are you battery powering them? (I'm fairly sure the circuit diagram doesn't tell me this... )

be interested to see how you get on (i'll notice your reply next time i swing by in 2 years time no doubt!)

Gah. I have about a hundred quids worth of stuff floating around somewhere. Need a hyperloop to China :C

Every building should have a mini hyperloop for deliveries, linked to everywhere else in the world so items can be sent straight to your home quickly.

I've currently already got sensors in various places using Arduinos+nRF24 transceivers+ds18b20 temp sensors. They make up the temperature part of my central heating setup. They're powered by USB supplies. Not made anything that is low-power enough to run long enough off batteries, though that would be the ideal situation, but plugging them in isn't an issue where I've got them located.

Just thought I'd give the ESP8266 modules a go because they're dirt cheap and my wifi network is better than the nRF24 system. Hopefully they'll have better range and reliability. 

cool; what do you do with the data ? send it somewhere? and how does it control heating.... made something?

A Raspberry Pi receives it and sticks it in a mysql database.

I've written a script that is run every minute and works out based on various factors whether to turn the heating on. Target temp, current temp, target room, whether I'm in the house etc.

The boiler has an Arduino, relay and 433 MHz receiver, that's the heating switch. The RPi transmits a 433 MHz signal to turn that on or off.

i see. any zoning?

Nope, I've looked at wireless TRVs but that's a step further than I can be bothered with right now. (plus the expense)

I can already pick a target room along with target temp so when that room comes up to temperature the heating goes off (or maintains that temperature).

I've also got an "auto room" setting which currently means that if either the bedroom or living room get above the target temp it turns off. I may add an "auto room both" type setting where it only turns off when /both/ the living room and bedroom hit the target temp.

The best bit though is having a /graph!/ to look at. Although my dad did ask my Uncle sarcastically if he'd like a graph of his living room temperature and he said no.

Yes I copied Ant and made one too :)

I didn't know you could get wireless TRVs. Interesting. Could you make your own with a normal TRV and a motor to turn it on/off? How many sensors you got in your house now?

Like the look of that... if/when I can be bothered I'd like at least some graphs... make me feel good about myself if I improve insulation or something....

Did one of you write code? Or is it something off t'internet somewhere?

Re TRV's - yes, you can get battery powered/wireless ones, there's some where the protocol has been reverse engineered - eq3 MAX! i think they are called - so you can talk to them with other stuff. You could make an electric actuator to replace a trv head I guess, maybe a stepper motor turning a bolt or something to get the up/down movement - but I'm fairly sure that if I made it it'd look too shit to put round the house.

If I did anything, think I'd add 2 port motorised valves on the feed to each rad where they split from the manifold under the floor upstairs (rads all fed from a central point here), or maybe group them into zones of a few rooms and put a 2 port valve on each zone (with one manifold per zone). 

I believe we both wrote our own code with a similar idea.

Mines just a bash script, running as a cronjob, nothing too excited.

As Ant said I copied his idea but wrote my own code. An embedded web server in a C++ program. Doesn't do such clever stuff as Ant's though, no temperature control, just switch it on for a certain amount time. Really nice to be out somewhere and the heating on so the house is warm when I get home. And lots of fun soldering up the sensors.

Graphs are good :) I want more sensors so I can have my whole house on my graph. And I did plan an outdoor sensor house thingy whatever they're called.

I worked in a house where the plumber (owner) had zoned his whole house with a central manifold. I don't know how useful that is in a house.

So burning off the spraypaint with the laser works really well. What doesn't work so well is me: thought it hadn't cleared it all as it was still pretty grey after the lasering had finished .Also the board had warped a bit with the heat. So I weighted the board down (note to self: masking tape it in place next time :@ ), and told it to go again but the alignment had shifted by about a millimetre. 

Cancelled teh job, took it out and touched it and the grey stuff was just vaporised paint that had settled on the board. Quick once over with a greeen washing up thing and it's bloody perfect, apart from the bit at the top that I fucked up by engraving twice! Argh! 

I'll clean the board off, re spray and do it again tomorrow. Looks promising, though:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u8q56y8t95m0znu/2016-03-08%2022.10.28.jpg?dl=0

A sponge?

Looking good. When are you going to be taking orders? ;)

For the amount of time that took it really isn't worth my while taking orders.

The trouble here is that I could just do it as a vector cut, making an outline around each component/trace. That'd be quick as fuck, but it wouldn't look as good when it was finished as most of the copper would still be there. :$

Living room - nRF24
Master Bedroom - nRF24
Kitchen - nRF24
Front room - nRF24
Box room - RPi
Outside - wired to the box room RPi

Want to put one in the hallway, which I guess is the classic place for a thermostat, but unless it's battery powered or right next to a socket it would be very ugly.

I've made loads of changes since but an earlier version is here

https://github.com/ant-thomas/centralheating

It's pretty simple stuff, and can no doubt be improved massively even beyond what I've done since. It's only bash at the end of the day.

Make a wireless one. Mine have been running for nearly 3 months and the batteries have hardly dropped. I should probably set up some kind of alert for when they drop too low.

If I ever get around to making some custom PCBs for them I'll try and find a little box to put them in (NJ) to make them nice and tidy. Have you ordered your PCBs yet?

How long does it take to zap all that with your laser?