Hi, newbie here. I have an ecobee thermostat that I want to get data from (perhaps a voltage divider at the heater) and send the on/off status to a lan database. I have worked in electronics and programming (php, c#), so I’m sure I can do this. I have a lamp server running on a network NAS, but I have no idea where to start (what parts, scripting, etc.). I found an article that’s in the ballpark - Sending Sensor Data Over WiFi - SparkFun Learn - which lead me here. Sorry if this has been answered already.
The tricky part will be reverse-engineering either the wireless protocol it is using or to tap into its on-board pins…you’ll need to pick which route you’d prefer and go from there (if you can access the unit on your home wifi this might be the easier route, but you’ll have to dig online to figure out how to get at its info…a lot of these style products use in-house software that can have uncommon/weird formatting). As for accessing the pins, you’d need to physically disassemble the device and figure out how it outputs data, solder either a wifi/bt module/MCU to those pins and proceed from there
In either case I suspect it’d be easier to just get a thermostat that already has the capabilities you’re after by default. Or build a fully DIY one comprised of a few of our products
Sorry that I didn’t explain myself well, but I thought it would be easiest to use a voltage divider at the heater itself to detect being turned on and off. I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned the controller itself (throwing you off the trail), as the voltage divider at the heater would work for any controller. On a side note, I did try wireshark on my lan, and never saw any data transmissions of value (decipherable or not). There were multibroadcasts, but again, nothing of value.
So, I’m looking for one of your boards/systems where I can input a voltage that will send a signal over the lan (wirelessly or via cable) to an ip where I can use the information (on/off) to write to a database.
I would be happy to buy another controller if that would make things easier, but manufacturers all want you to use their app and system to record YOUR data, and then make you jump through hoops to access YOUR data (such as ecobee, which apparently no longer fully supports their api).
Anyway, thank you for the response.
You can do this pretty easily with an ESP32 using an analog input pin and wifi to post MQTT that is then passed on the wherever (just be sure to match i/o voltage, the esp32 is 3.3v, most sensors are 3.3v or 5v…mostly 3.3v these days)
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