raspi-heater

This is a NodeJS based software for raspberry pi to control my heater at home. Maybe you'll find it useful for yourself.

Features

• Time and location based temperature: at home, away, or away for holidays
• Interrupt the automatic setup for 15 minutes heating
• control via iOS 10 HomeKit
• Display the current status on a connected LCD display

How it works

Right now the software just activates a relay when the temperature gets too low. In theory it should be possible to extend it in order to support digital thermostats.

Requirements

• RaspberryPi or similar
• relay module (I used the Foxnovo 2-channel relay)
• temperature sensor (I used a DS18B20 sensor)
• some wiring
• NodeJS 6 (tested with 6.9.x)
• MongoDB (tested with 3.4.x)
• optional: -- forever a node deamonizer, OR: -- pm2 and avanced process manager, which consumes quite a lot of ressouces (wasn't able to run it on a raspberry 1, you should use forever instead -- 1602 LCD display module

Setup

• setup your RaspberryPi (or something similar) like in the matching guidelines
• connect your relay to GND and a GPIO port
• connect and setup your temerature sensor according to it's manual
• install NodeJS like this:

  $ wget http://node-arm.herokuapp.com/node_latest_armhf.deb 
  $ sudo dpkg -i node_latest_armhf.deb

• node -v should now return something like this:

  $ node -v
  v6.9.1

• optionally install pm2 or forever like this:

  $ sudo npm install pm2 -g
  $ sudo npm install forever -g

• checkout this repository, probably in ~/raspi-heater/ or /etc/raspi-heater/
• run npm install in that directory
• create environment config file:
  • create new file .env
  • add the mongodb location like MONGODB='localhost/heater'
  • you can use both a local mongodb and a server based, although i noticed that the latency is likely too high to support a proper control
• Adjust config.json to your needs:
  • Change the GPIO ports to your ones and your sensor name
  • Change the desired days, times and temperatures - if no temerature is set for a status, the default temperatures will be used
  • Change the locale
  • If you want to use multiple raspi-heaters: -- use the same central database -- give each one a different zone id -- deactivate the home- and holiday status accessories on every instance exept the main one
• start the processes you need:
  • bin/control.js for the general controller
  • bin/homekit.js for homekit support
  • bin/display.js if you've connected a display
  • you can start all three with the pm2 process manager with the added process.json
• if you want to start the processes via a custom /etc/init.d-Script, you probably want to install raspi-heater into a public location like /etc/raspi-heater instead of one users home folder
  • then you can add the processes to your custom /etc/init.d-script (assuming you want to use forever):

    cd /etc/raspi-heater && sudo forever bin/control.js
    cd /etc/raspi-heater && sudo forever bin/homekit.js
    cd /etc/raspi-heater && sudo forever bin/display.js

  • if you want to use pm2 you can simply add:

    cd /etc/raspi-heater && sudo pm2 start process.json

• to check the current status:

  $ node bin/status.js
  ########################
  #### raspi-heater Status
  ########################
  heaterOn        true   since 8 minutes
  targetHeaterOn  false  since a few seconds
  cooldownOn      false  since 25 minutes
  heatingMode     auto   changed 8 minutes ago
  ######################
  isHome     true
  isHoliday  false
  ######################
  current temerature:  19.9
  target temerature:   20.0
  ######################

Future features (maybe)

• browser interface
  • server based, with own database and replication
• real support for multiple instances in the same home network