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Attacking My Landlord's Boiler

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Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler

#11

Post by smelendez »

I wonder what the ideal one-size fits all thermostat looks like.

The one in my apartment has a “feature” a lot of US thermostats now have, where you set four ordered times called wake, leave, return, and sleep and the temperature you want the space in each interval. I know very few people who actually live in a household where everyone wakes, leaves, returns, and sleeps on the same schedule every day.

I work from home and personally just want to set a temperature and have the space stay at that temperature indefinitely but this system requires that I tap through and enter the desired temperature four times, while confirming the four intervals.

I guess I’d be happier with a more programmable thermostat that I could set to behave like an old school dial thermostat.

Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler

#13

Post by nippoo »

willvarfar wrote: post #2

I guess your toolbox really shapes your solution space thinking; as I read through this, being completely lost in the whole world of RF whatnot, my mind jumped straight to an alternative attack that better fit my own tooling: could you encase the thermostat in a box that you can mechanically control the temperature of?

Yes! You can indeed do exactly this. Look up CoolBot - they do exactly this, by just heating up the existing thermostat

Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler

#14

Post by glitchcrab »

yurishimo wrote: post #10

If OP ever shows up here, you probably could have just replaced the thermostat with one that is compatible with your boiler for less money and headache. The boiler market is fairly open to competition as evidenced by the fact that you could find a Honeywell signal in a random OSS project that also worked. Good luck with your future apartment customizations!

I think you missed where it was explained that the apartment is rented and therefore you cannot modify anything.

Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler

#17

Post by [deleted] »

smelendez wrote: post #11

I wonder what the ideal one-size fits all thermostat looks like. The one in my apartment has a “feature” a lot of US thermostats now have, where you set four ordered times called wake, leave, return, and sleep and the temperature you want the space in each interval. I know very few people who actually live in a household where everyone wakes, leaves, returns, and sleeps on the same schedule every day. I work from hom…

[deleted]

Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler

#18

Post by Griffinsauce »

glitchcrab wrote: post #14
yurishimo wrote: post #10

If OP ever shows up here, you probably could have just replaced the thermostat with one that is compatible with your boiler for less money and headache. The boiler market is fairly open to competition as evidenced by the fact that you could find a Honeywell signal in a random OSS project that also worked. Good luck with your future apartment customizations!

I think you missed where it was explained that the apartment is rented and therefore you cannot modify anything.

Cannot modify irreversibly though right? Something like a Nest or whatever is easy to return to the original state when you leave.

Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler

#20

Post by willvarfar »

avidiax wrote: post #5
willvarfar wrote: post #2

I guess your toolbox really shapes your solution space thinking; as I read through this, being completely lost in the whole world of RF whatnot, my mind jumped straight to an alternative attack that better fit my own tooling: could you encase the thermostat in a box that you can mechanically control the temperature of?

This sounds good, except that cooling a box is problematic. He needs the temperature sensor to read low so that it turns on the heat. That said, if he has access to the interior of the thermostat, I'm sure it won't be difficult to replace the temperature sensor with a circuit to cause it to read either really high or really low on demand.

I was literally imagining duck-taping one of those cheap electric "instant cooling" cups over the box on the wall, and running a small incandescent bulb in to be the heating up element.
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