This is a re-post of what I wrote here back in Sep 2009:
It’s been a while since this posting and I now have installed Vera + Wayne Dalton thermostat controls into my 2 vacation homes (one required 2 thermostats) and things are going well.
As background, I have written an online vacation rental management system (www.myvrzone.com) and automate everything I can about the day-to-day management. My goal with Vera was to save $ by ensuring that the homes are not heating/cooling when unoccupied and when occupied do give the occupants the ability to modify the temps within some range that I define. The occupied/unoccupied mode changes needed to happen automatically.
I wrote a bunch of LUA code for Vera that provides the following functionality:
- Reads temp settings and reservation/occupancy information from my online reservation system
- Uploads temp history to the same system for viewing there
- Can override default temps per reservation
- Has min/max setpoint values that it will reset to if the thermostat button is used to go beyond them
- The occupant can change the setpoints within the range
- Has an optional “drift” back to my desired temperature over some custom time period
- Different occupied setpoints to allow changes during the day
- Tolerant to power outages in terms of recovering to previous state
- External internet access is only required for downloading updated info/uploading history and the system is tolerant to that being down
I have further information and screenshots here:
I offer this code and integration to all paid MyVRZone accounts (www.myvrzone.com).
Neilios