Re: Looked at new thermostats, nah I'll DIY this
As I said, it depends on the resources that you have available to throw at that aspect of the problem.
If you have a live connection to <something else>, then you can bundle up all of the data that you think may be of interest and spit it out -- and forget it, thereafter.
You can use a database as a "whiteboard" through which you share information among clients. So, you can regularly feed it tuples with "current conditions" (instead of just those times when you actually "take action"). This would allow something else to extract information of interest -- like just how hot the house gets on a winter day in the absence of active heating.
That "other thing" doesn't need to be able to query the thermostat directly (and the thermostat doesn't need to be able to respond to such queries). Instead, just look at the data in the database and extract the information of interest.
The thermostat can also "fetch" its operating parameters from a particular schema. In that way, it need not have a (complex) user interface; let something else (PC?) generate the operating parameters (e.g., pretty user graphics) and stuff them in that schema in an agreed-upon format.
As I said, it depends on the resources that you have available to throw at that aspect of the problem.
If you have a live connection to <something else>, then you can bundle up all of the data that you think may be of interest and spit it out -- and forget it, thereafter.
You can use a database as a "whiteboard" through which you share information among clients. So, you can regularly feed it tuples with "current conditions" (instead of just those times when you actually "take action"). This would allow something else to extract information of interest -- like just how hot the house gets on a winter day in the absence of active heating.
That "other thing" doesn't need to be able to query the thermostat directly (and the thermostat doesn't need to be able to respond to such queries). Instead, just look at the data in the database and extract the information of interest.
The thermostat can also "fetch" its operating parameters from a particular schema. In that way, it need not have a (complex) user interface; let something else (PC?) generate the operating parameters (e.g., pretty user graphics) and stuff them in that schema in an agreed-upon format.
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