'Granola-eating tree hugger' takes plunge, becomes IoT upstart When I wrote my last startup-diary instalment I was still at my desk in the City a few days each week. In the months since then I and my co-conspirator in OpenTRV have both handed back the keys of the courtesy helicopters and Ferraris that all IT folks get there (uh huh…) and gone full-time on our planet-saving mission - halving …
"and the dispatch rate should be throttled back a little and an empty bus or three quietly taken off the route to save emissions and cash"
Just because I'm the only one waiting at the bus stop I don't want the bloody thing going back to the garage instead of turning up for me to ride on.
If that sort of stuff happens then those with the ability to do so will revert to the car, not exactly what is tech is trying to achieve is it?
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That's a problem with the stupid route, not the tracking. Why is he going empty to the shopping center if he can't actually pick anyone up? And if he's empty, it should be understood why he's not going there.
And if he's not empty, he can take people there but not bring anyone back? That makes no sense to me. (that may be because I've never been on a bus, nor do I plan to be)
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"As I understand it, the route works normally, taking people in both directions, until the last journey, where it terminates at the far end, presumably due to working hours, or whatever."
But that still doesn't really make sense in terms of the final point Gene made. It's an out of town shopping center - and the bus can take people there, but there's no way back by bus; it goes out of service.
Given that, I'd be surprised if there is ever anyone on that journey - even the journey before seems pointless, because passengers would presumably want to do their shopping and come back on a later bus.
I'd say the timetable should be rearranged such that the bus terminates at the other end of the journey, or perhaps somewhere more appropriate along the route so that the final service on that route is from the shopping centre back into town. Or possibly not have the last four or five miles as a non-stop express, and instead not have it pointlessly go all the way to the shopping centre, so the route can be used more practically by passengers.
However, as you say:
" the company is fined for any lost mileage"
That's the real problem. The route and timetable is designed not for reasons of practicality, and common sense can go wait on the bus stop for another service (if there is one). The route and timetable is designed to achieve a certain number of miles, in order to avoid fines. (And if you hadn't mentioned that, my guess would have been to ensure they get the full subsidy from the local authority or whoever - which may or may not amount to the same thing; a fine being a reduced subsidy.)
So it's probably the local authority that needs to be given a good beating with a clue bat.
It really is about time people admitted what IoT actually stands for - Idiots only Things.
I've yet to see an IoT idea that wasn't just a con for the gullible - throw in a few Eco-Buzwords and they just eat it up. Never mind that everyone else thinks it's a just another stupid waste of money. It *might* sound like a good idea in principle, but that just means you haven't thought it through properly.
Still, if you can con some money out of them in the process - good on ya...
...are a solution for dumb boilers. There's your issue right there - you're solving the wrong problem.
When I upgraded my boiler a couple of years ago, I made sure it had the external temperature sensor that it is able to regulate its energy consumption accurately according to how cold - or not - it really is outdoors, and it also knows what the temperature is inside the house from a remote sensor on one of the internal walls.
The boiler therefore only bothers heating enough hot water to send out to the radiators sufficient to warm the house to a scheduled temperature - and we're able to tell the boiler not only when we're likely to be home or not, but also whether we actually are.
It works brilliantly, and my gas bills have dropped significantly - the savings will be paying for the boiler pretty soon.
Sadly a lot of people are going to miss out on this sort of thing - the installers didn't even understand the fundamentals of the energy saving potential that this technology has - they were planning to use a dumb remote thermostat rather than the OpenTherm controller, and had no idea what the external sensor was for - which I had to order specifically, otherwise they would not have fitted it.
The only thing I would still like to do to improve efficiency even more is to install a zone controller, which allows you to treat for example your lounge and bedrooms separately - since people tend to have different heating requirements in these different rooms at different times of day.
You needed to pipe the "Zones" differently.
Best way is for there to be upstairs (sleeping) and downstairs (living) zones that have their own circulation pumps. The Zone Stat controls the pumps. Neighbor has a domestic water coil too which is a different "zone" and only comes on when there is a hot water demand.
Most time that does not require a separate controller, many boilers today have extra zones built in as well as an outdoor air temp sensor input that creates an offset between outside and inside temps. Basically, it track outside air temp and makes the inside boiler water temp rise slowly as OA temp decreases.
> Smart Radiator Valves ...are a solution for dumb boilers.
> ... I made sure it had the external temperature sensor ...
That's called weather compensation and is a solution for dumb systems. Yes, it's much better than a fixed temp, but far better still would be smart TRVs which signalled the requirements back and controlled the boiler.
Zoning only goes so far - eg it heats all the bedrooms, even if you only use the back one intermittently as an "office". Ditto downstairs - it won't leave an empty room unheated unless you manually shut down that radiator.
So my ideal system would be a smart TRV on every rad so I can program a typical profile* for each room, combine it with other sensors (if the window is open then it's probably too warm !) and possibly occupancy sensors. Then each smart TRV signals it's state back to a controller which regulates the flow temperature (using the weather comp input if the boiler isn't very smart, or better still a controlled mixing valve on the thermal store). So as the TRVs are closing, the flow temperature reduces to the point where the last TRV isn't fully closed.
* Note that "profile" may or may not include "off" for some rooms - just set back the temperature at night so the (eg) bedroom doesn't get too cold.
Yep, ideally you want each room independently controlled.
I have a 12 zone Honeywell evohome system including 4 underfloor zones. It's a bit expensive, £300 quid for the controller (inc. boiler link and Internet gateway) and around £50 for each TRV. The TRVs detect open doors, windows and will turn off the radiator.
Each room can have its own programme and the system can be controlled via IOS and android apps.
It's taken my gas bill down to £800/yr from £1200 - with a payback of around 30 mths.
My only grumble is that it's a closed system with no hooks for other house control systems.
My major concern is that your smart TRV on every radiator has batteries. In a house with, say, 10 radiators, I'd expect at least one smart TRV to need replacement batteries every month. What a PITA (especially now that the batteries are hidden behind teenager-proof armour). I want my IoT doohickeys to make life easier, not to force me to struggle on my hands and knees behind the sofa because the sodding batteries have gone flat again.
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