Heating monitoring system - any suggestions

heavydawson

Hey all,
After spending a considerable sum piling insulation into the new build (still ongoing) and putting a lot of effort in airtightness detailing, I want to see my heating metrics. My plumber will of course be putting in stats/controls, but I'm more interesting in actually monitoring the trending heat information in the house.

Some of the things I'll be looking at will be:
* Individual room temperatures
* Outside air temperature at North and South of house
* Wind speed + direction
* Solar energy (I'm guessing I might be able to get this from the panels)
* Outlet and return water temperature from all water heating sources
* Water temperature in water cylinder
etc...

Ultimately I want to use to figure out a per-season heating plan, or one that adapts to outside air temperature and wind conditions.

I'm looking to do this in as cheap a manner as possible, and I'd like to be able to gather this information and view it over the home network. I'm wondering if anyone has gone to these lengths on their own place?

If you have specific components in mind, please PM me the details rather than posting them here. However, if you've got further questions around my reasoning (madness) keep the discussion here.

fclauson

I thought about doing this - but now we are built - have a HP which thinks for itself (and uses about €3 per day for h/w and heating) I have sort of got over the idea.

You can use 1-wire devices and the a Aduino board - but it can get very fiddle and the return on investment is not there

ted1

Syxth sense do a good range of wireless modbus probes that will do the temperatures for you along with other parameters such as humidity.
A simple data logger will take this in for you. They may have one that measures w/m^2 and wind, bit somewhere like met.ie or weather underground can provide a good indication. For you hot water a heat meter will do this and give a kwh output which could also be taken into the data logger

beyondpassive

For a conventional heating system with solar we've been building a data logger to collect information from the boiler and MHRV alongside the heatmiser stats and programmer. It next to impossible to get various systems to talk to each other. Its fairly straight forward to monitor room stats, solar panels and accumulator, but we need to know how much energy the gas boiler is supplying and how efficient the MHRV is. We want to collate a years data in order to validate the design model, or put simply to prove that the passivhaus works exactly as designed (if not better)

It contains the following components

1. boiler valve voltage reader
2. Four RTD sensors in MHRV
3. Audon 16 channel universal data logger GB£350+VAT
4. Web link - PIC microcontroller
5. External Weather sensors

Its not cheap though would cost about €750+ to build and install.
D.Callaghan from DIT put together a design. This has been modified since with input from Tom Cosgrove, who is building it more as a domestic scale BMS (building management system). The uplink woks a little like a climote and allows you to monitor it live from your mobile device and remotely overide thermostats.

ted1

beyondpassive wrote: »

For a conventional heating system with solar we've been building a data logger to collect information from the boiler and MHRV alongside the heatmiser stats and programmer. It next to impossible to get various systems to talk to each other. Its fairly straight forward to monitor room stats, solar panels and accumulator, but we need to know how much energy the gas boiler is supplying and how efficient the MHRV is. We want to collate a years data in order to validate the design model, or put simply to prove that the passivhaus works exactly as designed (if not better)

It contains the following components

1. boiler valve voltage reader
2. Four RTD sensors in MHRV
3. Audon 16 channel universal data logger GB£350+VAT
4. Web link - PIC microcontroller
5. External Weather sensors

Its not cheap though would cost about €750+ to build and install.
D.Callaghan from DIT put together a design. This has been modified since with input from Tom Cosgrove, who is building it more as a domestic scale BMS (building management system). The uplink woks a little like a climote and allows you to monitor it live from your mobile device and remotely overide thermostats.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to get systems to talk. But that's a round about method.
You need to use standards, genreally you'll use a standard like modbus, or else signals like a pulse relay for quantifiable values or a 4-20mA signal for analogue values or occasional use a 0-10v output. Any realiable meter will provide one of the above signals

heavydawson

Plenty of useful information here, so thanks for all the pointers. Time to go and do some homework!

mccleanp

I am working on a similar system on my own house. I have heatmiser network stats (which I highly recommend) connected to a raspberry pi (£25) via RS485 (approx £20) and then some custom software to log the data and display on a webpage on my home network, so I can access it from my PC or iPhone. Unfortunately its still a work in progress, but I would be willing to share it once it is more complete.

In the longer term I would like to connect it to solar panels controller, oil burner & pumps, oil tank, electricity monitor, weather station, etc.

In my opinion this is true home automation.

PM me if you are interested in collaborating.

archtech

There's a full time course in LIT Tipperary (Thurles) which focuses on monitoring of energy use etc. might be worth talking to them. Smart Energy Systems is the course title

ted1

archtech wrote: »

There's a full time course in LIT Tipperary (Thurles) which focuses on monitoring of energy use etc. might be worth talking to them. Smart Energy Systems is the course title

We designed our own EMS system that is used by hundreds of companies in Ireland and other countries.
We have integrated with virtual every BMS, SCADA and meter there is available. Trick is to keep it simple, use standards and ensure data integrity.

JuniorB

Heatmiser do a central control unit for stats.
http://www.heatmisershop.co.uk/network-controls-c3/central-control-c14/heatmiser-touchpad-central-control-p57
We have one in the utility and find it very handy. Can see usage etc over last few days/weeks/months as well as set stats, copy stat config etc

fclauson

So i have been looking at this for some time - but not made much progress
MHRV talks RS232
Solar PV talks RS485
HP talks Modbus (but no published schema)
Thermostats talk Modbus
Burglar alarm talks USB RS232

why the could not all have a simple web interface

I would be keen to know about or colaborate with anyone who is looking at this

ted1

You can get 232 to 485 converters easy enough

Forgot to mention most 485 connections are actually modbus. The schemes are genreally easy to guess especially if there is only a few registers

fclauson

yes - but the pain is that each has its own protocol etc - I wish the each had simple web interfaces

heavydawson

fclauson wrote: »

yes - but the pain is that each has its own protocol etc - I wish the each had simple web interfaces

Ha! Where's the fun in that? Generally speaking protocols shouldn't be too difficult to deal with once they're relatively well documented. I work in IT, and I'd be interested in building something that spoke a couple of different protocols.
Anyone else on this thread savvy with a programming language or two?

MrCleanP, I just PM-ed you. I'm interested in taking this a little further.
There's no reason why a generic enough data logger isn't feasible for the domestic market. Cheap and cheerful.
There's plenty of ways to develop the code in the open (hello GitHub), and allow anyone else to contribute.

beyondpassive

heavydawson wrote: »

MrCleanP, I just PM-ed you. I'm interested in taking this a little further.

Ted1, MrCleanP, fclauson, heavydawson; is this cheap domestic BMS runner? I'd be happy to provide a Passivhaus-ish building to trial it on. What would be the cost of components. I'mmeeting the client on tuesday, I'd like to suggest a way to PC-link the heatmiser and weather station along with the other environmental systems.

I must admit that all those new fangled vandangoes with their knobs and dials and flashing lights goes well over my head, don't get me started on programming. I'll sit this one out and wait for the prototype.

heavydawson

beyondpassive wrote: »

Ted1, MrCleanP, fclauson, heavydawson; is this cheap domestic BMS runner? I'd be happy to provide a Passivhaus-ish building to trial it on. What would be the cost of components. I'mmeeting the client on tuesday, I'd like to suggest a way to PC-link the heatmiser and weather station along with the other environmental systems.

I must admit that all those new fangled vandangoes with their knobs and dials and flashing lights goes well over my head, don't get me started on programming. I'll sit this one out and wait for the prototype.

BP,
I was doing a little initial digging on the weather station side of things, and this peeked my interest based on basic functionality, options for extendibility and user reviews around the web:
http://www.peetbros.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=2

Mods, this is arguably not a well known brand, but I don't work for them, so I'm hoping the link doesn't violate the forum charter.

What this doesn't cover is the heating system measurement (apart from the internal thermometer). I'm still researching it, but I'll post here when I've got some more to share.

mccleanp

beyondpassive wrote: »

Ted1, MrCleanP, fclauson, heavydawson; is this cheap domestic BMS runner? I'd be happy to provide a Passivhaus-ish building to trial it on. What would be the cost of components. I'mmeeting the client on tuesday, I'd like to suggest a way to PC-link the heatmiser and weather station along with the other environmental systems.

I must admit that all those new fangled vandangoes with their knobs and dials and flashing lights goes well over my head, don't get me started on programming. I'll sit this one out and wait for the prototype.

I am definitely proceeding on this project but my day job is crazy at the moment so progress is slow. I'm an embedded software engineer by day so this sort of thing is my bread and butter.

I have implemented the heatmiser RS485 protocol in C and have a simple command line program to read temperatures from all my stats. Next stage is to link it to some sort of web interface. I am looking into open source web solutions at the moment. There seem to be quite a few and there's no point reinventing the wheel.

I can share the code if anyone is interested.

My hardware is a raspberry pi and a USB RS485 module (http://apple.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/ftdichip?productID=119&op=catalogue-product_info-null&prodCategoryID=90) plus some connectors, cables and power supply, etc. Total cost is approx £60 so far.

My solar panels controller also have a RS485 interface so that would be my next target. The others parts would require more hardware and time although I think the raspberry pi should still be the heart of the system. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to pool our resources?