Well, I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here and offer two things I know of, not done by me, but rather done by others, that I think are pretty darned cool…
@PrincessCleavage has a setup where motion detection interrupts a movie playing to show security cameras, then resumes the movie after;
@cl.se controls his pool pump based on real-time temperature differentials of his solar system and pool to maximize utilization of available heat and energy efficiency.
I think the coolest things are done where you bring data together from the multiple and/or unusual inputs into a salient, useful response.
I know others have done things like this, too, and if you’re thinking “mine isn’t really that cool,” you’re probably underestimating how inspiring small successes can be, especially to newcomers in the community who wonder just how far they can take things, or how easy or hard they are to get done. Please chime in!
To explain what I did was to build a box with
1x Box (obviously)
1x Z-Wave relay switch (AN179)
1x Fibaro Universal Binary Sensor
4x DS18B20
1x 12VDC power supply (for the binary sensor)
No lux or UV-sensors are present, I use physics instead.
I wired everything up with a female/male connector between the wall plug and pool pump, and of course a switch for overriding or running manually.
DS18B20’s sticking into the inlet and outlet are shown below.
The third DS18B20 went into the pool and the fourth are below one of the solar panels on the other side of my house (on top of my garage).
Not a very fancy installation but well hidden and not very expensive. The number of square meters of solar panels (best described as matresses) are currently low since I just restarted the pump for this summer, and scrapped my last build of poor quality solar panels. So this weekend I will have 8 square meters for my pool and I know from last summer I will reach somewhere about 37 degrees celsius from that solution.
So right now, the temperature is quite cold. It takes a few days tempering 20 000 litres of water
I like to analyze things and besides Reactor, my favorite plugin is dataMine2.
Below is a visual of how I’ve arranged it. I have just a few minutes ago started to log my heating effect in kilowatts (using a Reactor expression), so it’s currently zero but will start logging in the next minutes.
I project will have about 5 kW of solar power heating the pool very effective and always switch off if any cooling will occur.
The pump will start circulating when the solar panels are 4 degrees higher than the pool water (Reactor expression), and turn off if the inlet is colder than the outlet or pool water.
Knowing the flow of the pump (calculated from specifications and assumed pressure drop in the piping/solar panels), I calculate how much heat are transfered which in other words means how much energy I collect from the sun.
So, when presenting my project for my wife, I can easily say the investment cost half of what a comparable water/air solution cost, and consuming a third as much energy (5 kw-water/air consume 1 kw + 400 watts water pump, this 5 kw-solution only consumes 400 watts of water pump).
So I can have more money for other project
There is some pretty awesome examples of what can be done!!! I reckon a section should be created on this forum where users can share what they are doing and with more detail on how they achieved their goals!
