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roflwaffle · 06-29-12, 09:47 PM

With X10 you can get a starter kit (shop around, their usual "sale" price is ~$100, but you should be able to get most of that for something like $40 or so) that has a usb or serial wireless transmitter to interface a computer via one of the RF receivers and a few modules/couple remotes. Control of the devices through a program like bottlerocket in *nix is pretty straightforward, and I think getting some one-wire temp/humidity sensors and writing a bash script using something like digitemp would be fairly straightforward too. The nice thing about a system like this is that it's very flexible and extensible. You can start with a simple whole house fan that would turn on when the windows are open and the outside temps are low enough, and expand that to something that can open/close windows, turn on individual fans, check the weather forecast, and even integrate something like a solar collector system into automated climate control.

06-29-12, 09:47 PM	#8
roflwaffle Apprentice EcoRenovator Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 116 Thanks: 29 Thanked 12 Times in 11 Posts	With X10 you can get a starter kit (shop around, their usual "sale" price is ~$100, but you should be able to get most of that for something like $40 or so) that has a usb or serial wireless transmitter to interface a computer via one of the RF receivers and a few modules/couple remotes. Control of the devices through a program like bottlerocket in *nix is pretty straightforward, and I think getting some one-wire temp/humidity sensors and writing a bash script using something like digitemp would be fairly straightforward too. The nice thing about a system like this is that it's very flexible and extensible. You can start with a simple whole house fan that would turn on when the windows are open and the outside temps are low enough, and expand that to something that can open/close windows, turn on individual fans, check the weather forecast, and even integrate something like a solar collector system into automated climate control.