Category Archives: Home Assistant

Building a Better Thermostat

After I came home from a recent trip that happened to occur during the middle of a heat wave. I arrived to find my apartment quite too hot, it was at least 45 C inside. Needless to say it wasn’t the most comfortable way to come home after 15 days out of town. Especially given that it took several hours for my in-wall AC units to cool the apartment down. After this I decided it was time for me to do something about it to address this issue.

I had  been listening to some of my friends tell me about their home automation setups for a while, but I really never saw the point for myself. Living in a small one bedroom apartment where I don’t have any sensors, networked appliances, and only have 2 in wall AC units I figured there was nothing I could really automate.  But, after thinking about it and talking to a few people I came to the conclusion  could use it to solve my apartment temperature issues.

I would essentially need to create my own thermostat, in other words something that can read the current temperature of my apartment and the adjust the AC based on that. That sounds like the same basic premise behind home automation, so it seemed like a good fit for me.

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