Okay, there are too many open source home automations out there but whenever I tried to look into making any of these I ended up with a bitter taste because of one or a few of the following reasons:
- The software part was open but the hardware was based on boards either too complicated to produce myself economically or simply proprietary that I could only buy ready
- The sensors/parts were too expensive
- It was too ugly for my living room
So I started from scratch by listing my requirements:
- It has to be open source and open hardware as much as I can
- It should not rely on external web/cloud/log servers
- I want to control heating independently
- I want to control hot water independently
- I want to be able to monitor and control it over the internet (from work basically)
- I want to be able to add more functionality later
- I want to be able to control it “old-school” with its buttons and screen while in the house without the need of a smartphone at hand
- I want to be able to not only schedule it for regular usage but also to manually override it and set my own
With all the above requirements and after some prototyping, experimenting, failing and experimenting again I decided:
- RaspberryPi should be the main board running plain old raspbian
- A cheap 1602 LCD display should be enough for my needs
- 4 buttons should be enough (Heating boost, Hot water boost, Temperature+, Temperature-)
- A custom shield-type board should be produced compatible with most RasPi variants/versions
- A pretty enclosure should be purchased to stay pretty – so this will be the non open source part of this ible, sorry (I’m working on a 3D printed case)
- Its name will be HestiaPi – derived from the Greek goddess of home hearth, warmth and heating
So what is HestiaPi?
- HestiaPi is a box, similar to what many home thermostats look like
- You fix it on the wall where your old thermostat used to be
- It connects to your old heating/hot water wiring
- It connects to the Internet over WiFi
- Inside it is a credit card sized computer running Linux
- No additional system is running anywhere else on the internet and no other computers are required to run any other programs. Everything is hapening right inside that box!
Sounds fun? Let’s build one! Here is what you will need.
For More Details: HestiaPi – Open Smart Thermostat
