Wireless thermostat

Hi,

I work 30 min away from home and have to stay at work unpredictably long.

Is there such a thing as a wireless thermostat - in the sense that I can login to it and turn the heat on as I'm leaving work. (There are wireless cameras, why not a wireless thermostat?)

Many thanks in advance!

Aaron Fude

Reply to
aaronfude
Loading thread data ...

Yup, Wireless or via phone. I just installed programmable 'stat. Perused quite a few models to make a choice and I do remember there is such a thing. Receiver module and 'stat combo kinda thing.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

I know this may sound totally off the wall, but there's this cool search engine called Google

formatting link
that lets you enter a term like "wireless thermostat" and then gives you several pages of info and sources for them.

Reply to
BruceR

you may find more at comp.home.automation

Reply to
Chub

Check out

formatting link
They should have some choices and ideas for you.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

loops. just woke up. sorry didn't look at newsgroups posted to.

Reply to
Chub

I looked into this awhile back and found two things that may be of interest. One is that there are thermostats available that can be controlled via a phone interface. I think I also saw some that could be controlled via computer too. I think the phone control idea may be more practical, because that way you can change the temp by calling in from anywhere, say on the way home from the airport.

The other device I found was a telephone dial in controller that had a couple of outputs from a relay that you could use to control anything. Using that, you could use the phone to switch between two thermostats. You could have the main thermostat set to hold at say 45, and leave the aux thermostat always set to 70. Then, on the way back home, you could call in and have it switch.

It looked like they did a pretty good job on this unit, including ability to work on same line as an answering machine. You can set the unit to pick up on say ring 5, while the answer machine picks up on say ring 3. To accesss it, you call in once, let it ring a couple times, then hang up. When you call back again within 30 secs, the unit will answer on the first ring. They have access code protection too, of course.

Reply to
trader4

I'll second that. They have a LOT of cool stuff....

Reply to
Dr. Hardcrab

Yes, but the words you want to search on are remote controlled, or something like that, not wireless. They have them that work with the internet and those that work with the telephone.

If you have to leave the computer on all day long, it might cost as much as keepign the heat on low, with a setback thermostat to turn it up.

How does one figure that. 200 Watt power supply (now theyt're bigger) times 10 hours equals 2 KwH = 25cents, going up to 44cents in June here.

400 watt power supply =88 cents a day. not so much but for 250 work days that's about 220 dollars a year, plus wear on the harddrive. :)
Reply to
mm

Even a fully loaded PC doesn't draw 200W. My 500Mhz machines draw 80W in standby and the newer, faster ones draw 130-170W. A mini-ITX draws as little as 15W.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Indulging in this offtopic, my server is a broken screen laptop (so the screen is off), 66 mhz pentium, whose harddrive never spins and chip runs at an average load of 0%. How much is it costing me a month?

Reply to
aaronfude

I did this years ago with a X-10 system. Set the thermostat where you want it. Plug a X-10 appliance module to a nearby electric outlet. Make a cord up with a regular plug at one end and a resistor at the other. I think I started with a 10K Ohm 5 Watt, but changed it to a 15K later. Fasten the resistor under the thermostat. You can call the X-10 controller and turn the resistor on or off. When on, it heats the thermostat and the heat will stay off unless it gets a lot colder than the set point. The resistor makes almost no heat, but it it's enough. BTW: My thermostat was an old manual job with a plastic cover and had a slot at the bottom and top. So the warm air would pass through it. My system also controlled some lights and the wash machine. The wash machine was an after thought because the timer stuck one day and let my clothes agitate for about 12 hours.

Rube Goldburg, I know...

Al

Reply to
Big Al

That 400W power supply tops out at supplying 400W. It would consume more than that while providing 400W. Of course in real life few average anything close to 400W.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Plus, where is the PC power going? It's going into heating the house. All PC's built for quite some time have the ability to power down the disk, put the monitor on stdby, etc as well, so the real power can be an order of magnitude less than the max rating of the power supply. No way that can come close to the savings of lowering the furnace substantially in cold weather.

Reply to
trader4

Very true, but I did not want to add that as during the summer it will increase cooling cost. :-)

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

If you are a DIY type and like to tinker and make things for little $$$, you can make something like my servo setup below to control a standard type of t-stat over the net. This setup would also allow the computer to control the t-stat via the windows scheduler. The bottom link is a DIY pan/tilt cam that uses the same servos as the t-stat gizmo, so you can see how easy it would be to control over the net.

formatting link

Reply to
Si Ballenger

I've been working on a remote control thermostat "Cricket" and more, I recently posted "Elephant" which is a very inexpensive HA server (my web pages run on it) and I'm working on perl scripts to control the serial port. Although the Green Elephant uses a recycled PC I would recommend a VIA EPIA PD 6000 (fanless) for the mainboard (4 serial ports and 2 Ethernet ports) It's tiny as it's a Mini-ITX and has plenty of 12V power options. I'm thinking of hooking up an 80W 12V solar panel and large 24AH GelCell to run it and the cable modem.

Bill

formatting link

Reply to
William at MyBlueRoom

formatting link
Advanded furnace control by Bryant. You add the "Remote Access Kit".

Reply to
RoughRider

Do they make thermostats that have remote controls too? That is something I always wished they made. It would be so nice to wake up in the morning during the winter, grab a remote next to my bed and turn up the heat BEFORE I get out of bed. Right now, it's get out of bed, run to the thermostat, turn up the heat and rush back to bed shivvering. A programmable thermostat solves this problem for people that get up at exactly the same time each day, but for those who are on changing schedules, or no schedule at all, they are useless in this regard. I was even going to move the thermostat once, so it was next to my bed, but I decided that would not work because the bedroom is on the end of the house, and it would be on an exterior wall. Both of these are WRONG, since they should always be in the center of the house and on an interior wall (for best heating control). A remote would be so nice.

Last summer I saw a window fan at a store that had a remote. I thought that was pretty useless. Like how lazy can a person be. But for a thermostat it would be perfect.

Mark

Reply to
maradcliff

There's a simple solution to this problem. Just run two thermostats in parallel. The "regular" one you keep where it is and leave it set the way it is.

Put the other unit near the bed. At night leave it set way back and let the regular unit determine when to deliver heat. In the morning reach over and turn up the second thermostat. Before you leave the house turn the second thermostat back down.

If you have an alarm system you can even semi-automate the heat. Run the wiring through a relay and have the relay cut power to the second thermostat when you arm the system in "away" mode as you leave the house. When you return disarm the alarm and the house will warm up to whatever setting you've chosen.

You can even take this a step further. Place the second thermostat in an appropriate place (perhaps next to the original unit) and add a wireless remote to arm/disarm your alarm system.

If you don't happen to have an alarm you can still take the first step above. You can even rig a latching relay to set/unset the second thermostat via a button near the bed and another near the door.

Reply to
Robert L Bass

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.