The system consists of a computer that controls the central heating system and several other circuits, used for switching lights on and off, controlling a semi Whole House Ventilation System. The computer also has inputs, these monitor room, and outside temperatures, humidity, extraction fan speed in addition outside light levels are monitored, there is spare capacity to add other devices. A WiFi connection allows me to control the system remotely.
My original plan was to use an old Atari 400 to control the central heating as I could not find a commercial product that could handle the four week shift pattern I was working at the time. The Atari seemed an ideal machine, it has 8 analog inputs, it is small and it has no fan, Unfortunately one of the disk drives failed while writing the software and memory was starting to get tight so I decide to use an Amiga 500 instead. The software was written in Amos Basic and the system ran faultlessly for three years.
The big problem with the Amiga was there is no easy way of getting proper analog inputs, the analog joystick inputs do not like long cable lengths and you only have four inputs. In 1997 I decided to replace the Amiga with a PC built from bits and pieces I had in the loft.
The data collected by the sensors are displayed on screen and sampled once per hour (for exporting data), at the end of every day the data is stored to disk as a CSV comma separate file for importing to Exel etc.
Running z2 Remote2PC software, available from Handango Handangohttp://www.handango.com/
Circuit Details
Humidity Sensor: HIH-3610: Honeywell web site Humidity Sensor