Creating a garage-venting system

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Hi Everyone,

I’ve been digging into home automation a bit, and wanted to create a system that’ll turn a socket on/off based on temperature conditions, and buttons. I started off on smarthome.com, and the controllers required to program nested ifs are really expensive - I think this beagle board would do the trick.

In short, I want to turn an outlet on in my garage when:

  • the temperature inside reaches >= 30 deg celsius, and outside temp is at least 5 deg cooler than current temp
  • or, I hit a “Vent” button and it runs for 30 minutes
    Is controlling an outlet with BBB possible?

I’ve found these temp sensors:
(outside) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11050

(inside) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10167

This push button:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9181

Could I rig these things to work with BBB? If so, the missing piece is the relay to power the outlet on and off. Ideally, there’d be an inline relay that I could use (no outlet, much like http://www.insteon.com/pdf/2475sdb.pdf).

Appreciate your guidance, new world to me. If I can get the hardware squared away, I can certainly figure the rest out (am a programmer).

Thanks for your help.

2

Oh yes! BBB is way more than capable of doing what you want to do. Actually a bit of overkill if this is all you want to do, but anyway . . . It clould be the first module in your ultimate home automation setup.

Here’s a controlable outlet: https://www.adafruit.com/products/268

You would be monitoring 3 inputs and controlling 1 output. Easy Peasy!

-david