boilerio 0.0.1

Installation

Check out the repository, then install using pip:

$ git clone https://github.com/adpeace/boilerio.git
$ cd boilerio
$ pip install .

Use -e to pip to install in development mode (i.e. just link to the checked-out source instead of installing it).

The scheduler

The scheduler comes in four parts:

1. The database. You need to be running postgres; once you have installed postgres you can create a database user and database for the scheduler, then user scheduler.sql to create the requisite tables. (This currently assumes the databsae and a role exists called scheduler.)

2. The controller. This is the scheduler Python script. Ensure this daemon is running to push target temperature updates to the boiler controller (the maintaintemp script) and update the cache of the current temperature in the backend web app.

3. The web app. This is the schedulerweb Flask app. The recommended configuration is for this to be proxied through nginx and run inside uwsgi.

4. The web-based UI. This talks to the schedulerweb app and presents a UI where the current temperature and schedule can be configured.

You’ll need to the running the maintaintemp service also described below to issue commands to your boiler.

Example uWSGI configuration for schedulerweb (assuming you have the Python package installed) - this can be placed in /etc/uwsgi/apps-available on Ubuntu’s version of uwsgi:

[uwsgi]
socket = /var/www/boilerio/thermostat.sock
module = boilerio.schedulerweb:app
logto = /var/log/uwsgi/boilerio/thermostat.log
uid = boilerio
gid = www-data
chmod-socket = 664

boiler_to_mqtt

The boiler_to_mqtt script implements an MQTT-topic based interface on top of the serial protocol provided in the thermostat.git repository. In short: it turns the boiler on and off via MQTT. The serial interface in thermostat.git is designed to interact with a Danfoss RF thermostat receiver; if you wanted to use a different receiver you can substitute a different service.

Ordinarily you’d leave this service running so that other services can turn the boiler on/off as needed.

This service and others in this repository use a common configuration file. See below for more information.

maintaintemp

This is the main script and implements a PID controller to maintain a given set temperature.

Example usage:

$ maintaintemp emon_sensors/emonth5 0xBAB1

The first argument is an MQTT topic from which to get temperature updates. These updates should have a JSON payload with an object with at least a temperature value. The temperature updates can be at any frequency, but I’ve mostly tested with updates being sent every minute.

The second argument is the thermostat ID to use in messages to the boiler. For the Danfoss RF receiver I’ve been testing with, you will independently need to send a ‘learn’ command; this should be transmitted repeatedly (with the correct thermostat ID) while you hold the ‘PROG’ and ‘CH1/2’ button and wait until the light flashes green on the controller.

You can send learn packets in a loop with a simple shell loop, if you have the mosquitto clients installed and are running the boiler_to_mqtt.py script:

echo -n "Learning mode - program boiler then hit enter... "
while ! read -t 1 ; do
    mosquitto_pub -h <host> -u <username> -P <passwd> -t heating/zone/demand \
                  -m '{"command": "L", "thermostat": 47793}'
done

The heating/deamnd topic should match the configuration file you set up - see below for more information.

The scheduler, mentioend above, will issue commands to this script to set the target temperature. If you don’t want to use the scheduler, you can publish messages to the MQTT topic listed as the target_temp_topic in your configuration file. These should be of the form:

{target: 19.5}

For a broad description of the behaviour of this program, please see the blog entry on the website mentioned above.

boilersim

This is a trivial simulator intended to help debug and improve maintaintemp. It follows a really simple heating/cooling model and generates a table as output.

To run, use a command-line such as:

$ boilersim -r 18 19.5 600

The -r option introduces some random noise into the temperature readings generated by the simulation when passing them to the controller.

The first positional argument is the starting indoor temperature to simulate. The second argument is the target temperature. The third argument is the simulated runtime in minutes.

This program produces logging output to stderr, and a space-separated output to stdout. The output is similar to:

...
1.0 0 0 17.9964773317 17.9876417779 0 0 0
...

The columns are:

1. The time into the simulation, in minutes

2. The amount of time in that minute that the boiler was on for in the simulation.

3. The current duty cycle of the boiler in the simulation.

4. The current simulated room temperature

5. The fake temperature reading passed to the controller including any error introduced by the -r option.

6. The current value of the proportional term of the PID controller.

7. The current value of the integral term of the PID controller.

8. The current value of the differential term of the PID controller.

You can use the plot\_sim.gpi gnuplot script to plot the output of the simulation. E.g.:

$ boilersim -r 18 19.5 600  2>log >sim_data
$ gnuplot plot_sim.gpi

The gnuplot script assumes the simulation output is saved to a file called sim\_data.