I’m strong on networking and Windows eco-system and a bit thin on Linux and Python, but I do have some resources available to me on Linux/Python and need to learn so happy to challenge myself in this regard.
I currently have HomeSeer home automation server running on my own Windows Server (08R2) but it’s unused. I also have Google Home and a few Amazon Echos that I’ve been experimenting with.
I’d like to put a Raspberry Pi to use to collect and possibly process data on temperature controlling the house for best efficiency. I’m thinking 2-3 temperature sensors and if possible a camera that can read digital displays to scrape temperatures or settings on a remote. This could be done manually using a camera if it’s a bridge too far.
I’d also like to tweak A/C according to solar energy being generated.
My question is, what gear do I need? What thermometer sensors are compatible with the RPi, and which RPi is best for the job? Has anyone successfully scraped data from a digital display for processing?
I have strong wireless in the house along with a few Ethernet ports I had run in a recent house renovation.
You could use a Pi Zero WH for each of your distributed temperature sensors to transmit their readings to the cloud to keep the size and cost down and avoid running long wires.
Here is a tutorial on temperature sensing with the RPi:
Here is some home temperature monitoring tutorials for the RPi:
As far as the photos, you could use a Pi camera. As far a scraping images for data is concerned. Look into OpenCV. You can find a bunch of tutorials on it here and its most certainly what you would want to use for that:
I would think it might be easier to make your own remote that reports its settings than constantly capture and process photos though. You can record all the IR blasts with an IR reader and microcontroller, and then make a device that sends the same IR signals, displays the settings, and uploads them to the cloud so you can monitor them.
I hope that helps! It should at least get you started!
