Features?

[tabath]

First of all an apology if what I'm looking for is somewhere obvious ! I only found out about this project 2 days ago and have been watching videos and reading your site since. I have been thinking about implementing a home automation system in my house for some time with the possibility of then adding this service to my existing business.

I have 2 questions :

1) Is there a list of features anywhere that will tell me what support for various technologies is already present in LinuxMCE. The area I am interested in is heating control and I was previously thinking about using and adapting the opensource project Mister House along with one wire networks and some form of actuator to provide automatic and programmable temperature and zoning control as well as some form of weather compensation to the heating system in my house.

I am actually a Corgi Enigineer(a qualification that allows you to work on gas appliances in the UK)and fit heating systems as part of my job, in fact I am self employed.

I think I have read somewhere that someone has used 1-wire Nets with LinuxMCE is there any documentation on this?
Are there any people here from the UK who have used LinuxMCE to control their heating?


2) This is an open source project , is my understanding correct that I could still use this in a commercial project as long any changes made to the code are maade under the same licence? I am a bit vague on the lincensing issues involved here and would appreciate some pointers on material relevant to it that I could read. My idea at the moment is to offer my service and sell the hardware to customers to provide them with an easier gui than they get presently with the numerous programmers and thermostats that I install and are obviously not designed to be customer friendly. Sometimes if the devices include RF stats the cost con be £150 or more. I am sure there is a market for me to offer a LinuxMCE device as an alternative with some of my customers.

If I'm out of order and have the wrong idea about this please let me know. I think this is a fantastic project and would like to offer my help if I can help at all? I'm sure my IT skills are not a patch on those of anyone already working on this project but here's a list of some of my skills anyway.

Maths and Physics Degrees
8 years teaching at Secondary level.
Did some c programming many many years ago but nothing really for the last 10 years
Have a pretty good knowledge of networking, have MCE status for all thats worth .
Have started to use linux myself for the last 2 years - though not to anything approaching guru depth
I have a pretty good knowledge of heating systems and their control- in the UK anyway!

[tabath]

Oh btw , has anyone here tried using old xboxs as media directors/thin clients(yes I know they're not very thin.lol)

[totallymaxed]

First of all an apology if what I'm looking for is somewhere obvious ! I only found out about this project 2 days ago and have been watching videos and reading your site since. I have been thinking about implementing a home automation system in my house for some time with the possibility of then adding this service to my existing business.

I have 2 questions :

1) Is there a list of features anywhere that will tell me what support for various technologies is already present in LinuxMCE. The area I am interested in is heating control and I was previously thinking about using and adapting the opensource project Mister House along with one wire networks and some form of actuator to provide automatic and programmable temperature and zoning control as well as some form of weather compensation to the heating system in my house.

I am actually a Corgi Enigineer(a qualification that allows you to work on gas appliances in the UK)and fit heating systems as part of my job, in fact I am self employed.

I think I have read somewhere that someone has used 1-wire Nets with LinuxMCE is there any documentation on this?
Are there any people here from the UK who have used LinuxMCE to control their heating?


2) This is an open source project , is my understanding correct that I could still use this in a commercial project as long any changes made to the code are maade under the same licence? I am a bit vague on the lincensing issues involved here and would appreciate some pointers on material relevant to it that I could read. My idea at the moment is to offer my service and sell the hardware to customers to provide them with an easier gui than they get presently with the numerous programmers and thermostats that I install and are obviously not designed to be customer friendly. Sometimes if the devices include RF stats the cost con be £150 or more. I am sure there is a market for me to offer a LinuxMCE device as an alternative with some of my customers.

If I'm out of order and have the wrong idea about this please let me know. I think this is a fantastic project and would like to offer my help if I can help at all? I'm sure my IT skills are not a patch on those of anyone already working on this project but here's a list of some of my skills anyway.

Maths and Physics Degrees
8 years teaching at Secondary level.
Did some c programming many many years ago but nothing really for the last 10 years
Have a pretty good knowledge of networking, have MCE status for all thats worth .
Have started to use linux myself for the last 2 years - though not to anything approaching guru depth
I have a pretty good knowledge of heating systems and their control- in the UK anyway!

Hi,

I just read your post above. We're based in the UK too and we build/configure LinuxMCE systems and we custom install/fit our Dianemo product. Dianemo is aimed at the complete non-technical customer who just wants a professionally installed system and full support (a very different group to the community here).

We have not installed any heating controls yet for customers... but we are getting ready to do so using z-wave enabled controls.

There is some information about CHT and our products here http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Convergenthome. Get in contact if you'd like more info or a chat.

Andrew

[tabath]

Hi thanks for your reply Andrew, I'll read through your wiki.


The problem with heating control is the zoning. I have an idea for a new install system with actuators on the outlets off a manifold (commercially available) controlling the zoning to each room rather than spliting the house into 2 or at most 3 zones using 2 way zone valves as happens in most cases at the moment. The big hardware problem I 'm looking to solve at the moment is how to add room by room zoning to an already installed heating system. Siemens do Rf controlled motorised Trvs but there are problems of both cost and interfacing with these , I'm still searching for some sort of actuator I could mount on top of standard trv bodies but so far no joy. I would be very interested in how you intend controlling the heating system, I hadn't heard of zwave before I found this site.

[tabath]

Have had a quick look at z-waves site. On first glance they seem to be following the standard heating control/feedback setup of having one room stat controlling the whole system or probably more if the system is zoned with 2-way valves. However I'm looking to do something a bit more advanced. My first thoughts were stats in all rooms, using something like iButtons and a 1-wire system should be cost effective 
and zoning of every room in the house, backed up by weather compensation(again using iButtons) which can save something like 15% on systems and should be amandatory in part L of the building regs. Viessman boilers have these controls as options and outperform the rest when they are fitted. I'm also trying to avoid the badly designed user interfaces that the manufacturers produce:

http://www.z-wave.com/modules/iaCM-ProReg-II/index.php?op=showCat&id=52&segId=1&adId=171 

being very similar in appearance to siemens, danfoss etc controls that I install.