Hi guys,
I’m pretty new to all this and would like to get some pointers to one of my more complex needs - but one that isn’t limited to just one occurance in my home.
This involves a thermostat and a plugin-module. The heaters are connected to one plugin each and there are a few thermostats around the apartment. I can see that Vera offers me a solution to do something when the temperature drops below or rises above a set value. This is no good for me. I want to read out the user set temperature and use that in a sensible way for our very demanding climate.
How would I go about this? Would I read the user set value from the thermostat on change, or should I poll? Do I do this in the plugin I write? I guess LUUP is the way to go (which reminds me - are there any good intros?). Should I set the value in some internal variable?
Here’s how my initial look is at the problem:
- I know the user set temperature is 20C (or anything else)
- I know the outside temperature from some other sensor
- I know the windows in my living room are pretty poorly isolated and once the inside temperature starts to drop quickly it’s hard to stop it in a short amount of time
- I know which plugin modules my heaters are connected to
So, I figure the first thing I need to do is calculate some sort of delta T.
- Just out of the air, I could do something like dT = 100 - (Tout). Outside temp of 25C below would then give me a delta of 120 while 20C above would give me 80.
- To stop declining temps as soon as possible in cold weather, I could use this to calculate the trigger temperature inside as Ttrig = Tusersetting* (1- (dT/100)). The lower outside temp would now give me a higher trigger point and thus not let the apartment cool down as much. Summer temps outside would probably never even trigger it as 75% of 20C is 15C - and that doesn’t happen all too often during summer.
- To stop the heaters from heating up too much in spring/automn while still heating up enough to make an impact in winter I could use the same dT to calculate how much above the user set temperature to go before turning off the heaters. Tlimit = Tusersetting * (dT/100) might be a sane starting point.
Is this the right way to look at the problem, or are there easier ways? Anyone know of anything similar I might be able to use as a reference?
Cheers,
Lars
