Guess who has AUTOMATION going? :D

So I spun up my air-exchange HVAC system’s test platform in “summer” more with the new air-exchanger controller board set up and programme, and it checked all the temperatures, recognised it was cooler outside than in, overrode the time-of-day basic programme and wirelessly opened the vent to bring in cooler air!

Or turned on the little lamp standing in for the vent, whatever. It’s still proof of functionality! And while it is a test platform – running in parallel to the real one – it’s still working off live data. So it’s literally as real as the production version!

the little white light means it’s working!

Indoor temperature was a warm 21.5°C, so in Summer mode, the system should trigger air exchange and bring in outdoor air to cool the house via the air exchanger. And it did! And then I put it into winter mode and it flipped back to closed, also just as it should.

SMOKE mode closes the vents too – we’ll need that in, well, smoke season.

I set smoke mode manually but again, everything else is live data, including the air exchange status display. It’s querying the board via wireless and getting the correct answer. If you unplug the hardware from power and plug it back in, it’ll see that the board reset itself to all-vents-closed and tell you, before fixing it. 😀

Indoors is 21.5°C and the software and hardware are opening the vent correctly in each mode

I also have a little bit of error handling. Just enough really? But it’s enough in that it tells you it can’t reach the board. After grabbing this capture I changed the code so it’s bold instead of ALL CAPS but it’s the same otherwise. That’s just formatting:

Anyway my plan(?) is to physically hook it up to the actual air exchanger hardware this weekend. Unless I change my mind. It’ll operate in place of a timer that’s down there at the moment, running on a set schedule that I’ve been changing a few times a year. That’s been neither optimal or fun, so having a proper way to do this – a way that actually responds to live data – is going to be pretty great and will hopefully will gain us another few percents of efficiency.

Bonus points: it’ll run off the furnace’s 24V DC system so I won’t even have to get sketchy with running electrical power to the board. All I need is one of my buck converters and it’s ready to wire up.

This is already a good system and it’s going to become a really good system and if I don’t have to flee the country it’s just going to be so nice having it here. Fuck yeah automation. This is gonna be great. 😀

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