Wi-fi controlled central heating

[Lobster]

Had a flyer through my door the other day, which actually caught my eye on it's way to the bin - British Gas plugging their new remote heating control system, which they will fit to non-customers at an installed price of £229:

I also spotted the following in a newspaper article (not entirely sure why as it's not actually available in the UK yet, but does look rather cool:

US$250

Seems to me that internet controllable central heating has come of age and is now well within the reach of the non-geek (no offence intended, Mr Gabriel!); I'd certainly be very interested in being able to control my heating remotely from a smart phone etc. I'm certainly not interested in having BG round, and doubtless it could be done cheaper by someone else anyway (if not me).

Does anyone have first-hand experience of any currently available systems?

[Jonathan]

ol:

US$250

Times had an article about the Nets thermostats last week - they are coming.

Jonathan

[Mentalguy2k8]

Just out of interest, why? Do people really fiddle with their heating enough to warrant spending that amount of money?

I can't say I've ever been away from home and wished that I could change the temperature of my living room or set a new schedule on the programmer.

[ARW]

The customers of the last new build I wired up spent over 2K so they could control the lights in their kitchen/dining room/family room via their smart phones. The mind boggles.

[Mentalguy2k8]

I must be missing something...

Maybe I should have an internet-controlled socket that I can plug my fridge into in case I ever need to turn it on or off while I'm at work :)

[Timothy Murphy]

But surely the price must drop dramatically. If you can adjust something manually then to adjust it remotely must be a simple electronic exercise.

[John Rumm]

It strikes me that one of the obstacles in setting up stuff like this in the past, was having an easy way to interface between ones LAN and the heating system without needing to tie up a whole PC or similar. In these days of cheap boards like the pi which have discrete IO, and ethernet / WiFi capability pretty much out of the box, it ought to be very easy to lash up a basic system.

Perhaps we should create a uk.d-i-y system and wiki it?

[ARW]

And they had a 40 zone UFH setup. There is no need for all that bollocks.

[John Rumm]

If you lead a lifestyle that means you are out for hours at a time and don't know when you will return necessarily, then I can see the attraction of being able to ensure you come home to a tank of hot water and a warm house, without having to keep it that way all day on the off chance.

(as a geek I can also see the attraction of being able to find out exactly what the heating system is up to at any given moment and keeping logs of same) ;-)

[ARW]

Nothing that two combi boilers cannot sort;-)

[Big Les Wade]

Mentalguy2k8 posted

Probably most useful for owners of second homes that they use for holidays and occasional weekending.

[Lobster]

Yep. We're away a fair amount (and as the kids fly the nest, hope to do so more). The ability to come home to a warm house with a hot tank of water would be great. The other thing is being able to monitor the house temperature when abroad, for example, so you're not worrying about whether your pipes are freezing up or not; though to be honest I think it's probably better to take precautions against that before leaving home rather than (a) hoping you'll have net access overseas and (b) spending a holiday faffing about and worrying about the temperature in your house!).

SWMBO hasn't cottoned on yet, but it would also enable me to find out when she's cranked the heating up to 35 degrees when I'm at work, and can take appropriate action without her (immediately) realising...

[Roger Mills]

that would be extremely useful for my holiday flat. We *can* currently use the holiday setting on the programmable stat to turn the heating (but not the HW) on just before we next expect to arrive - but that has its limitations, and doesn't work if our plans change. The ability to control it *and* monitor it remotely would be great. We do have a wireless router there which is always on - and I can already access that remotely to make sure that the internet connection is working.

I would welcome an idiots guide on how to set up a Raspberry Pi to provide remote monitoring and control.

[RJH]

I have an iPhone controllable thermostat from here:

Not got round to fitting it. The only complication for me that I can see is the need for a static IP address.

Rob

[Alan Braggins]

Because the Yanks generally use low voltage control circuits for their air conditioning and ducted air heating, and we don't for our wet central heating, apparently. Creating a version for the UK/EU market won't be hard, but they wanted to concentrate on their local market first.

[Caecilius]

There are more or less two competing standards IME: Zigbee and Z-Wave.

Zigbee seems to be more used for industrial and high-volume applications like smart meters; Z-Wave is more often used for DIY home automation.

Both are, IMO, far too expensive to be worthwhile at the moment. I had a look at the available kit, and the cost starts to mount up pretty quickly. I know someone who has gone the whole hog with control and monitoring using a Z-wave based system, but it's more because of geeky curiosity than anything else.

There's also some X10 kit still around, but that's an older protocol that uses the mains for signalling and is very limited.

[geoff]

Why are you thinking so small time ?

combi for each radiator ...

[dennis]

8<

The other thing is being able to monitor the house

You could just fit a frost stat. They tend to work when needed and not when you remember to see if its cold.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Think Diversity. As long as half are black and half are white.

[Onetap]

Only BMS (building management systems), which are purpose made controllers for heating, lighting and the like.

I think the BG-type controller is only offering one of the gadgets you cou ld have, and a fairly useless one at that. If it gets cold, I'd want the fr ost protection program to take care of heating; remote control would only b e useful if the sole occupant keeps random hours.

More useful features, that are available, would be; remote monitoring (see what the temps are/have been via internet). Logging of all temperature sensors, graph plotting; nice if you're trying t o track down a problem, a legal necessity for DHW & CWS in commercial or pu blic buildings. Remote alarm monitoring; e.g. boiler common alarm, temperature hi/lo alarms . No earthly use? How about having a maintenance contractor banging on the door before the room temperature has dropped enough for the user to know th ere's a fault? Been there, done that. Pump exercise. Two boilers? Duty sharing, automatic changeover (if one fail s), etc., etc.