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

juliankern / raspi-heater