I’m still debating my options for what to use for a “central brain” for my home… but I decided to start proceeding down the other route while I wait. Two steps of progress have been made today…
First: My 1-wire tempature sensors arrived (DS18B20). I took them, and jury rigged one of them into a RJ-45 (CAT5) jack. I then took that and ran it into my LinkUSBi and plugged it into my home computer.
Much to my surprise, it worked on my first try. Using the OneWireViewer java app (available online), I was able to see the temperature of my office (a tad warm at the moment, 83.5F to be exact). I was also able to watch the temp drop rather quickly when applied to the outside of my ice-water glass:
I’m hoping that tomorrow maybe I can find some time to take a quick trip to home depot and get everything I need to wire it up into some RJ-11 connectors so that I can test all 3 temp sensors in 3 different rooms.
In other news, I ordered a thermostat today. I decided on a Homewerks CT-80 from Amazon. This thermostat is insanely computer controllable with a very well documented and solid and API. Can’t wait til it arrives so hopefully we can start logging some basic temp data from it as well.
My new goal: 4 temperature read outs by Sunday…. Guess I better decide on a computer to use.