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A project log for ThermPi

A Raspberry Pi thermostat for my heat pump, with presence detection

nelson-butterworthNelson Butterworth 03/14/2016 at 16:280 Comments

The tstat project is currently on indefinite hold, merely because life and stuff got in the way. The Pi is currently set up with Raspbian Jessie and a Python script that allows it to use Amazon's Alexa Voice Service. This is mainly an educational diversion to show to the students in the computer class I teach, but since the AVS ToC requires any non-Amazon device to use a physical button to trigger the service rather than a voice wakeup, it is of limited usefulness. I hope that during Spring Break, which is in about 2 weeks, I will be able to restart the ThermPi project, though I still need a 24VAC transformer to build the power supply. Now that Radio Shack is bust, I'll have to head into a nearby city for one of the local electronic supply shops.

I will be making one change to the presence checking. Instead of reporting who is present, my SNMP setup will simply report whether anyone is present. Later revisions might enable different rules based on who is home, but out of the gate, overall presence detection is more important than identifying people and preferences.

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