For those living in areas of extreme cold (or hot) weather, having more than a general knowledge of the thermostat control is paramount to a bearable life. Thus many people are creating ways of monitoring and controlling the ambient temperature and thus the thermostat in their home or office. However the main problem is that the controller is either incredibly complex, expensive if you break it, old and fragile, or could expose the uninitiated to mains power.
To get around these problems can be quite easy, and one example of this has been demonstrated by Rahul Sangole. He uses an inexpensive servo to rotate his classic physical thermostat control, which allows for complete interaction with an Arduino - in his case with a WiFi shield and via a website. Rahul explains this in more detail in the following video:
Furthermore the temperature data is logged and sent to the online service xively, providing historical data for further analysis. To learn more about this project and for the Arduino sketches, check out Rahul's website. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
When putting together your next Internet-enabled Arduino project - save time, space and money with the Freetronics EtherTen. Apart from being fully Arduino Uno-compatible, it has onboard Ethernet, microSD socket, full USB interface (so you don't need a costly FTDI cable just to upload a sketch!) and supports optional Power-over-Ethernet.
