Controlling room temperature with Netatmo "occupancy detection" and IFTTT
/Thanks to the addition of Heatmiser range to the online automation service IF (formerly IFTTT - "if this then that") it's now possible to control room temperature using inputs from your other IFTTT-friendly IOT devices. In my case, Netatmo weather station.
In my house, heating for every room is individually controlled by a Heatmiser Neo thermostat, each running an individualised programme of temperature gradients throughout the day, tailored to each room. During the summer most of these are just on standby, meaning in practice unless the room drops below 12 degrees C, the heating will never come on.
My child's room is the exception, because we don't want him to ever get too cold, and some days he naps in the afternoon; so his thermostat is always active. So far so good. Except when you open the windows, perhaps for fresh air during the day, and it turns cloudy, the temperature drops and the heating comes on and heats the great outdoors.
Finally, I have a solution which does not involve adding sensors to the Windows.
The first step is to use Netatmo indoor station as an occupancy detector. Over the last year I've charted the correlation between occupancy and CO2 levels and in general found that an occupied room tends to read >500ppm CO2 and unoccupied room is below that. Of course if you open the window the CO2 level drops to almost zero very rapidly. So, this basic threshold measure can be used as a simple detection of empty room and/or wIndows open.
IFTTT recipes to control Heatmiser thermostats based on occupancy (CO2)
Of course, you might ask what happens if the windows are open while the room is occupied. Good question - but in our case it never happens; our child is young, so for safety when he is using the room we always have the widows locked shut.
This simple trigger forms the basis of the input to an IFTTT recipe which controls the Heatmiser thermostat in the same room. If the CO2 levels drop (room empty or Windows open) then the thermostat is set to 'standby' (this stops it following its daily program) and if CO2 rises again ( = occupied) the standby mode is deactivated and the normal program continues to run.
This way we hope to avoid those costly mistakes where we have opened the windows and forgotten to adjust the thermostat; or unnecessarily heated an unoccupied room.
For the future we can explore whether outdoor temperature, wind speed and rainfall can be used to optimise performance of the indoor heating.
