[sclug] Winter project

[Neil Haughton]

I've been musing over what actually to do with my Pi apart from play with
it when I have the time, and I thought a good use for it, to while away the
forthcoming winter evenings and also to put it to good practical use, would
be to use it to remotely control my central heating.

The idea is to connect the GPIO via some buffering circuitry to my actual
controller, to override the two switches that advance the CH and DHW
cycles, and also to replace the present room stat with a temperature sensor
that the Pi can monitor. The extra thing that would make this a useful
device rather than a slightly more complicated version of what I already
have in place is an Android app that allows me to connect over t'internet
to set the temperature set point and/or advance the CH and DHW cycles from
wherever I am using my mobile phone. I would also be able to monitor the
room temperature on the phone.

So the Pi would act as a "controller controller", connected via wifi to my
home router and operated by my mobile phone over t'internet to report the
room temperature or operate the two 'switches', perhaps with a simple
display on the phone showing the state of the CH and DHW cycles and current
room temperature.

The physics of it I am mentally equipped to do, but the Android app and the
Pi software are not something I have tried before (I earn a crust slaving
away at the .Net coal face and haven't had the energy to venture much into
Linux programming, in spite of best intentions).

Is there anyone out there who could (and would be willing) to mentor me, at
least to get me started, and perhaps offer guidance on how to do the
Android/Pi stuff? I expect I will be told to use Python on the Pi, which I
have never done before, and I guess Eclipse for the Android part (although
I am guessing there). I suppose Mono is out of the question, but that would
be more comfortable and reduce the learning curve.

TIA


Neil.