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Just getting started

Добавлено: Чт янв 03, 2013 3:14 am
kcsaff
Hi, I'm just getting started with home automation.

My story: I left my house over the holidays in the "care" of my girlfriend's brother, who didn't think it was important to tell us the house was unusually cold while I was away. When I got back, the entire house was below freezing, and all the pipes on the first and second floors had frozen. The boiler was running continually in the basement but couldn't push water through the frozen pipes. Fortunately there doesn't seem to be any permanent damage, but I'm trying to put in place a system to make sure this doesn't happen again.

So, what I'm looking for are suggestions for video cameras and a thermostat that would work well with Major Domo or at least let me remotely make sure that the temperature is set right and someone is actually checking in on the house. Does anyone have any suggestions?

By the way, when I signed up I had to answer a security question in Russian. I don't know any Russian so that was a bit hard. I had to use Google translate to translate the question to English, then to translate the English answer back to Russian. Maybe there should be a different security question for the international forum?

Re: Just getting started

Добавлено: Чт янв 03, 2013 3:15 am
kcsaff
Oops, double-posted. Mod delete one please?

Re: Just getting started

Добавлено: Чт янв 03, 2013 11:25 am
sergejey
Hi,

First of all, welcome to the forum! :) I didn't think about the security question -- my bad. No surprise it was so hard to get in here ))

I'm familiar with situation you have described. Actually I was in pretty the same situation some time ago when we left our house for a couple of days with no heating. Well.. the short answer will be yes -- it's definitely possible to avoid such a thing with MajorDoMo. First thing, system should know current temperature in the house. You should have at least one sensor with data coming into the system. This can be done with Arduino controller or 1-wire sensor placed. Second, you should be able to control heating somehow. In my case I can open/close heating valve with Arduino so I have a little script in MajorDoMo -- when the temperature is above the comfortable level, it's closing the valve and vice versa. So I can leave the house and it will maintain the temperature itself -- it just works like any thermostat does except it is more flexible as it can change the "comfortable temperature" automatically depending if there anybody home or not.

So, the first question is can you add any control to your heating?