For some reason, computer controllable thermostats are pretty freakin' expensive. I found a reference to a 1-wire thermostat in this(mirror) sample senior project on home automation. It turns out that Dallas Semiconductor put one together a while back as an application for their TINI platform. (web-application server on a chip). The write-up has since vanished from their site, but I found it thatnks to archive.org. The thermostat used to run about $50, and a similar model still seems to be produced. The 1-wire interface is pretty simple - Maxim's TINI board to control it: not so much. Just using the 1-wire interface with an inexpensive thermostat and controlling from a PC seems pretty viable to me. Just in case, I mirrored the 1-wire interface schematics here.
1. I'm starting to think I should check had a little less often, this is the second time in the last couple days that I've caught a hack within a minute of posting...
as for the hack itself, I wonder if the tini is any more straightforward to implement than that Ethernet communication device microchip produces?
Posted at 10:16AM on Oct 25th 2007 by Wolf