Hello Andrew,
>> Without dampers - absolutely, but without sensors... Never tried that,
>> and doubit it will work - HCC needs a temperature source to make a
>> control decision. Why would you want that? If I knew the reason, maybe
>> I could say something relevant.
>
> Sorry, I would have one sensor (like a standard thermostat) that would
> determine when to turn the whole thing on and off.
Of course that'll work. Moreover, if you attach more than one sensor,
you will most probably get a significant improvement in at least
comfort.
Case in point: my bedroom. Can't pull wires, wireless dampers are not
ready yet, so I'm just running two sensors and two zones (bedroom and
big hall, probably five times the heat capacity of the bedroom). At
daytime, the hall drives the HVAC. At night, the bedroom does. Common
sense would suggest that a small room will cause the HVAC to short
cycle, lose efficiency and work more, but this is not what is
happening. Since they're connected, the hall drives the temperature in
the bedroom in the right direction, and as a result - the HVAC works
less, and temperature changes in the bedroom are slower, but! it's the
bedroom that drives the temperature, hence, we're comfortable.
> Thanks for the help! I remembered I have an old HTC Incredible I might be able to use for the main
> android device.
Before spending any money, make sure the Android device you're
planning to use supports ADK. Today, the best bet would be probably
Nexus 7 - $200 for the 16GB one (and rumors are that the price will
soon drop to $150 while simultaneously upgrading the hardware, so stay
tuned).
You can make it breathe even without Android for now - look at the
source code, hope it's pretty simple to fiddle with it to accept
commands from the serial port and send the readings over it.
--vt