[sclug] Android and Pi

[Neil Haughton]

Thanks for all the replies. It was beginnig to sound quite scary until I
read in the latest MagPi mag of a lawyer gentleman of similar age (but no
technical education at all) who has nevetheless managed to concoct an
Android app that allows him to use his phone to control his Pi to turn
things on and off at home. For the fun of it, you understand.

Well if he can figure it out, I can too.

Especially as don't really want to spend the rest of my life building a
sophisticated, quasi-automonous, uber-green, argumentative HAL to live in.
I just want to turn the heating on or off when it suits me, whether I am at
home or not. :-)

Neil.




On 17 May 2013 13:00, <sclug-request at sclug.org.uk> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Wood vs GHC (Neil Haughton)
>    2. Re: Pi and Android app (Graham Swallow)
>    3. Re: Wood vs GHC (Bob Dunlop)
>    4. Re: Wood vs GHC (Ed Davies)
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Neil Haughton <haughtonomous at googlemail.com>
> To: sclug at sclug.org.uk
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 13:43:05 +0100
> Subject: [sclug] Wood vs GHC
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: ed neville <ed at s5h.net>
> > To: sclug at sclug.org.uk
> > Cc:
> > Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 19:14:20 +0100
> > Subject: Re: [sclug] Winter project
> > On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 08:56:31PM +0100, Neil Haughton wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
> > What would be a better idea perhaps would be to control a log burning
> > stove. Once the flue pipe reaches X degrees open the vents a little.
> > When the temperature reaches Y close the vents. If the temperature is <Y
> > then turn a stepper motor to open the stove door and insert either home
> > fire coals or logs with <20% moisture, close the door and lock the
> > handle.
> >
> > Of course, perhaps the above is only sane up the end of the second
> > sentence, perhaps the pi should page the stove engineer to carry out
> > appropriate maintenance.
> >
> > If you're lucky enough to have GCH then monitoring the amount of fuel
> > burnt would be awesome and linking the pi to monitor a carbon monoxide
> > detector would also be highly desirable (is the former even possible?).
> >
> > I'll go back to dreaming of a parallel world where I might have GCH.
> >
> > --
> > Best regards,
> > Ed http://www.s5h.net/
> >
> >
> > With a wood buring stove you can at least see your money going up in
> flames. With GCH it's all done behind closed doors, so the first you know
> of it is when the baillifs come to take away your furniture. GCH is not all
> roses, you know!
>
> Neil
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Graham Swallow <lists at information-cascade.co.uk>
> To: sclug at sclug.org.uk
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 14:17:35 +0100
> Subject: Re: [sclug] Pi and Android app
> ((I replied to a digest - so email threading will not perfect ))
>
> Android Tutorials can be found on YouTube
> They are all irritating, but some get more done.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boj0f_O3i88&list=PLGLfVvz_LVvQUjiCc8lUT9aO0GsWA4uNe
>
> Qt5.1 promises Android, and the non-bleed release, is R.S.N.
>
> http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2013/05/14/qt-5-1-beta-released/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=qt-5-1-beta-released
> But Android is really a JAVA+NON-X11-GUI+LIBS+RESOURCES platform
>
> Pi uses X11 ? Which allows pretty much any development env (except
> Android, .NET, W32), If you use Python, (a good choice if you never go
> down an unused code path), you will have to pick a GUI: gtk or Tcl/Tk
> or FL or FOX or Qt (X11 direct is possible, but only just). These have
> their own XML RAD tools, like glade or (...) where you draw a screen,
> built from components, add on_event() control function, and write less
> code, with options of moving to C, with the RAD layout file much the
> same.
>
> All scripting languages suffer the unexpected error on unused code
> path problem. Python is a very fine late-binding scripting language,
> with MODULE / CLASS / FUNCTION ideas at its core.
>
> Python's biggest disadvantages, are (1) every attribute needs a
> dictionary lookup, every time, and (2) that it has allowed
> feature-creep in, to its core, libraries and syntax. Lots of caveats
> mean that it is no longer as simple to read, as it used to be.
>
> Python is popular with hardware module writers,
> seeking a scripting platform to write a C-module for.
>
> Graham
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Bob Dunlop <bob.dunlop at xyzzy.org.uk>
> To: sclug at sclug.org.uk
> Cc:
> Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 09:33:59 +0100
> Subject: Re: [sclug] Wood vs GHC
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, May 16 at 01:43, Neil Haughton wrote:
> ...
> > > If you're lucky enough to have GCH then monitoring the amount of fuel
> > > burnt would be awesome and linking the pi to monitor a carbon monoxide
> > > detector would also be highly desirable (is the former even possible?).
> ...
> > > With a wood buring stove you can at least see your money going up in
> > flames. With GCH it's all done behind closed doors, so the first you know
> > of it is when the baillifs come to take away your furniture. GCH is not
> all
> > roses, you know!
>
> Oh for GCH, how I'd like that.
>
> Try burning oil to heat your home, now that hurts.
>
> Back to Pi's and heating projects.  Once you add a computer into the
> equation there is a lot more interesting things you can do even inside
> the realms of what might be considered sane.
>
> If I ever get my grandiose schemes off the ground I'd like to link various
> other inputs to my system.  A lot would be about attempting to predict
> future conditions to avoid running the heating unnecessarily.  So for
> example if the output from my solar PV system has been high for the day,
> I can predict that the living areas of the house will have benifited from
> a good level of passive solar heating, since this means I'm unlikely to
> need to run the central heating for room heating I would be better to
> provide the hot water demand by running the immersion heater than the
> boiler.  If I can predict this early enough I could run the immersion
> early in the day while the PV is generating.
>
> Or even simpler, try to avoid running the boiler when there's a North
> wind as it makes the kitchen stink of oil.
>
> I have PV panel, power monitoring and a weather station already logging
> to my computer.  What I need now are a few temperature monitors and the
> output controls to the heating.
>
>
> Another idea about predicting the future would be to scrape weather
> reports from the web and use these to modify your heatings behaviour.
>
> --
>         Bob Dunlop
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ed Davies <sclug.xu.1106 at edavies.me.uk>
> To: sclug at sclug.org.uk
> Cc:
> Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 09:49:11 +0000
> Subject: Re: [sclug] Wood vs GHC
> On 2013-05-17 08:33, Bob Dunlop wrote:
> > Back to Pi's and heating projects.  Once you add a computer into the
> > equation there is a lot more interesting things you can do even inside
> > the realms of what might be considered sane.
> >
> > If I ever get my grandiose schemes off the ground?
>
> I have somewhat more grandiose schemes which some might
> not consider sane.
>
> At the moment I'm sitting in a mobile home on a caravan
> park in Caithness waiting for the Crofting Commission to
> sort out the bureaucracy to allow me to buy a largish
> building plot (actually two plots) on the top of a hill
> overlooking the Moray Forth.
>
> The plan is to build a very well-insulated and airtight
> house which is not connected to the grid (mains electricity,
> water, gas, whatever) other than internet (and 'phone I
> suppose).
>
> Mechanical heat-recovery ventilation, of course.
>
> Primary power will come from PV and solar thermal. I
> plan to start with about 6 kW of PV and 8 ? 20 ? 47 mm
> solar thermal tubes (already bought and sitting, with a
> lot of my other stuff, in a shipping container up on the
> north coast). Energy storage will be a huge heat store
> (about 10 tonnes of water) giving near interseasonal
> heat storage and, initially, about 10 kWh of LiFePO?
> batteries. I'll see how that goes (with a little petrol
> generator for backup) over a winter or two then decide
> whether to add more PV, a small wind turbine (I have a
> particular 1 kW model in mind but will see what's
> available in a year or two) and/or more batteries.
>
> Anyway, there's a lot of opportunity to control the
> way that all operates to make things run more efficiently
> than the typically fragmented control setups I've seen
> bodged together on many off-grid houses. Anticipating
> the weather will be important (particularly if there's a
> combination of PV and wind) but I've yet to see any system
> do that. My plan is to initially manage it all fairly
> manually (switching stuff on and off as required) at first
> then automate as experience and money allows.
>
> I've been playing with Python and Node.js quite a lot
> over the last year or so including on a little ARM
> Pogoplug (http://edavies.me.uk/2011/09/ssh-pogoplug/).
> No strong feelings one way or the other between the two
> (I've got to quite like JavaScript now that I think of
> it as Lisp with semicolons, not baby-talk C++) but I
> do find the Node.js idea of using the same language
> (and even the same code) on the server and client
> attractive.
>
> More about the house on my blog and web site:
>
> http://edavies.me.uk/blog/tag/houses/
> http://edavies.me.uk/2008/11/house/
>
> Ed.
>
>
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