monitoring boiler via phoneline or computer

jim_14

sophisticated, likes hours ran per day,week,month,etc temp in house.. sorta like my honeywell digital tstat does now but accessable via computer

Fred P

Are there any programs or parts out there

that electronically monitor boilers and hook up to your home computer?

Im thinking of something that can be hooked into your home network, something that attaches to the boiler and via your network cable and can be accessed via a computer in the house.

I know they have these for commercial systems and apartment buildings, but what about for the residential use?

Paul Rohrs

P&M Magazine

Siggy wrote an article in P&M in October talking about just that.

http://www.pmmag.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/features/BNP__Features__Item/0,2379,109330,00.html

I am following a couple of key vendors and seeing what new products are on the horizon. I am hoping that I can dovetail some modest computer skills with my knowledge of controls to accomplish just that.

Regards,

PR

John Williams, Jr.

There are several ways

of doing it. It depends on how much you want to spend. Most commercial brands, which are the more accurate ways, will cost you and you need someone with access to purchase the parts and program the controllers for you. I.e. we have Johnsons Metasys in our house and we can link up to it from any ones computer as long as they have internet access, link up to our home computer and see the temperatures in any of our zones, change set points or even shut the system down.

A little less expensive would be Honeywells, Complete Home Comfort Network. Installed correctly, you could call your home and turn lights on and off, change temperature settings, etc. A little time and patients and you can build these controls to do what ever you want.

All of this is very old technology, it is in every high rise building in America, it's just that the controls have become affordable to sell to high end home owners who want that 21st century comfort control.


Learn, Do, Teach!!!
John

In this custome home we are doing now, we installed snow melt with mixing valve, 2 heating zones and indirect tank, all will be controlled from his computer. No stats in any room just room sensors. VFD's on the air handlers and modulating water valves on the air handlers. We did the same for his parents house 2 years ago and thier fuel bills have been less than $100.00 per month even with the price increases in gas.

Jason Horner

What about all the LonWorks controllers?

I was at the ISH show last year and saw a lot of this on display from different manufacturers. Looked pretty cool -

Imagine a web server that you could access at your weekend getaway from your jet as you flew there to kick the heat up in anticipation of your arrival, get the jaccuzi filled and waiting for your arrival :-)

We're starting to look at this sort of thing for a 6200' weekend house we are going to do in the spring. I just want something that will interface with:
a) the Viessmann controls
b) the alarm/cctv system
c) the fire safety sprinkler system
d) the automatic gate at the road
e) the 40Kw Onan generator
f) the Zenon Environmental water purification system
g) pool heater
h) anything else I or the homeowner can think of

I have not checked it out yet but I've been told about a system from Crestron that may be able to interface with all this stuff and more.

Dave P

There is an article in the Sept 2003 Linux Journal about a guy who put his sump pump on the web. You don't actually control anything, but it does monitor when in goes on and off. He basically uses a Hall effect to monitor current going through a wire, I imagine you could do the same thing. His site is http://pumps.oldtools.org ,but if you wanted to do any more than the site already does you would need to know how to write code.

George_10

Code writing is not that

difficult to come by. Either teach yourself Visual Basic or hire a high school student or a college student that needs to do a project for credit.

I have a friend in Calif that wrote his own software programs for grain elevators and walnut processors. He can monitor all of the systems he has out there from his home and make corrections if necessary.

It is just like this business, get someone in the know. An in this case there are more experts available.