search

geektechniquestudios / RPI-Retrofit-Smart-Thermostat

A spring boot and react software designed to run on a raspberry pi and retrofit to any thermostat.
11 stars 0 forks source link

Wiring Into Thermostat Issue #1

Open arm358 opened 3 years ago

arm358 commented 3 years ago

Hi came here from Reddit! Want to implement this in my own home. I have the software side down fine -- no problems there. Had a few questions on the actual wiring to the thermostat.

  1. You're using GPIO pins 0 and 1 which are physical pins 11 and 12 correct?
  2. Are you using a separate relay from the thermostat's own relay?
  3. I see you included a wiring diagram for a general furnace/AC system, but did you include where to connect the GPIO pins to the actual thermostat? Maybe I'm just confused by the other two photos showing the relay and some of the wires coming out of your Pi. Thanks!
geektechniquestudios commented 3 years ago

Thanks for checking out my project.

  1. The pins to use depend on which pi you're using. If you're using a pi0w, then yes. But just to add extra clarification, if you click on the link to the "pi4j wiring documentation" from the readme, it'll take you to the pi4j website. pin numbering choose the specific board you're using. For example, if you have a pi0w, you'd refer to this example You'd want to use these "0" and "1" pins. image

  2. I'm using these relays. Full disclosure, I'm an Amazon Affiliate, so I get a small amount of money if you click that link and buy anything in the same day (not just the thing I linked).

You'll want to connect the corresponding gpio pin from pi to the center pin on the relay. You connect the other side of the relay to the button terminals on your thermostat, so it's like the relay is closing the circuit the same way a button press would. I soldered my wires on, but you could probably get away with electric tape depending on your thermostat. If that still doesn't make sense, just let me know. I'm going to update the readme to include some more clarity either way.

  1. You shouldn't connect the gpio directly to the thermostat; you want to ensure the relay is what you use to interface with the thermostat buttons. I just made this rough sketch of what you're supposed to do. I'll make a better one for the readme in a couple of days. Note that the buttons in the sketch are implied to be the temperature buttons on your thermostat. rough-diagram

Thanks for opening this issue. I'll make a point to improve the details at these points in the readme, and if you have any issues, don't hesitate to let me know. I'll keep this issue open until the readme is updated.