Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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My current quest - and it's most certainly not life-changing - is that I'd like to find a means of measuring the temperature of my wood burning stove's flue. I need that means to be surface mounted (no drilling of holes in the flue), be able to reasonably accurately report flue temperatures up to 350degC (but not break if temperatures exceed that) and be network-enabled so as to report back to Home Assistant

So you can get totally analogue sensors that are held on the side of the flue by a magnet.  Hook up a cheap camera pointed at the sensor and feed the output to an AI system which interprets the image.

OK thats a silly suggestion I accept.

Posted by: @jamespa

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Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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My current quest - and it's most certainly not life-changing - is that I'd like to find a means of measuring the temperature of my wood burning stove's flue. I need that means to be surface mounted (no drilling of holes in the flue), be able to reasonably accurately report flue temperatures up to 350degC (but not break if temperatures exceed that) and be network-enabled so as to report back to Home Assistant

So you can get totally analogue sensors that are held on the side of the flue by a magnet.  Hook up a cheap camera pointed at the sensor and feed the output to an AI system which interprets the image.

OK thats a silly suggestion I accept.

Outlandish, I'll agree, and not one I'll pursue given the use of AI, but it's still a route I hadn't thought about. I already do have a flue thermometer attached, so I hadn't even considered some kind of OCR solution.

Even so, it's not as silly as you might think. One of my thoughts is to go down the ESP route and incorporate a little infrared sensor, so that's in effect a smart thermal camera.

Interesting new topic. Like you I tinkered with my cars from 18, lowering the shims on my allegro OHC to get it to breath better, yes it accelerated faster but couldn’t break the 95mph barrier (speed cameras didn’t arrive until much later)

I replaced it with a Fiesta which I fitted twin Webber carbs, and cracked 106mph in it. I had to use my own speedometer as the cars stopped at 90.

Fast forward to my last car, Jaguar XF; I took that to Germany a few times to test its road holding, and cracked 150mph barrier easily.

Now retired, I have a supercharded little Audi that can beat a Fiesta STD when the  numpty misses a gear change; his girlfriend was laughing so much I might have caused a relationship breakup. sigh

Back to topic: I have the Trifecta of Eco; PV, ASHP, UFH, Battery and an EV for the summer 🙂

Ive fitted my own EV wall box; it’s not a charger! Thats built into the car. The wall box is just a 30A socket, that can negotiate with the car to allow charge to pass, sometime both ways.

I’ve read many posts from people struggling to get room temperatures balanced. What I’d like to see is a heat loss measuring device. It would need to know the outside air temperature of course, and would measure the rate of heat loss from 21C to 18C.

This would allow you to work out the heat transfer you need from the heat emitter, usually radiators upstairs but I’ve seen baseboard heating advertised; would it work at HP temperatures.

My downstairs is a lot easier to configure as I have multi zone UFH. At the manifold you can adjust the flow rate of each loop to between 0.5 and 1.5 l/min.

I did have temp controlled valves on the manifold, but the Cosy6 had a fit when the loops turned off and the flow rate dropped below 12 l/m, so now I run it open loop and regulate the temperatures with the flow rate adjusted, so now no room gets beyond 21C

Id like to delve into Home Assistant, but I’m still renovating several parts of the property and super insulating every ceiling and wall void.

The Cosy6 is coping a lot better 1 year on to heat the property when OAT is about 2C, several rooms have both rafters and joists insulation. I’d like more information from Cosy6 about how it’s performing, the phone App only shows temperatures, no flow rates or flow/return temperatures

@majordennisbloodnok 

Easiest solution is a surface mounted thermocouple, this will fit any datalogger with the standard 2 spade connector

i Bought one for my multimeter, use it to monitor flow temps of water thru the house, I needed to quantify how long it took hot water to get from the tank to the outputs; bath, shower, sink etc so could plan how to repipe the system to reduce water waste while waiting for hot water

@majordennisbloodnok There's a certain irony reading this topic that I feel myself drawn to it, precisely because I've been sucked into the rabbit hole of increased experimenting with / analysing of the heat pump's output via reading yours, and to a lesser extent others, contributions to this forum.  I now seem to gaze at Home Assistant screens with a puzzled look in the way that I used to do with Excel when searching for a solution to something that didn't quite work properly.

Unlike you, I'm very much a 'settings' tinkerer and will shy away from doing too much requiring 'practical' skills, which I acknowledge I generally lack.  Adding the CN105 dongle was a leap of faith for me, albeit more complicated because of the physical location of the unit, so it felt like a DIY task as it required balancing precariously on steps, etc to overcome the physical constraints of the job.  In general, I like the comfort of knowing that I can easily switch something back to the previous settings as a safety net. 

I had to step outside my comfort zone in this regard at the weekend, as we had to disconnect an integrated dishwasher in the kitchen in preparation for a new freestanding one to replace it (in general, the paid for at purchase assembly services have a caveat that they won't replace integrated units with freestanding ones) and doing so without swearing felt like an achievement.  Taking a circular saw to the kickboard to carve out a gap for the new device yesterday had me practically beating my chest like Tarzan at a successful outcome, which pretty much defines where my skill levels are in this regard.

Looking at your questions, on the tariff query I can't see that there's a better alternative to Octopus Intelligent Go for minimising our overall costs, and the extent to which I balance the usage is to hammer the overnight tariff as much as possible, other than for the heat pump's heating operation, where it's proving to be less practical to do so.  I'm encouraged so far that the blended unit rate of electricity on my latest bill is a little over 11p/kWh, despite the increased peak rate usage from the heat pump.

I'm very likely to invest soon in a Thermal Imaging camera (one of those that attaches to your phone).  Part of the justification for this is heating system related, but this wouldn't be sufficient, but I've been intrigued for a while as to whether such a device would also provide useful data for the beehives that I keep in the garden, specifically in being able to assess the health of colonies over the winter period where you typically leave them alone unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise (e.g. emergency feeding).  With a dual purpose for it's use, I can more easily justify spending £140 or so on one.  Oddly, beekeeping related tasks are ones to which I'm much better at finding improvised solutions/fixes when needed, and is where I have to use my limited practical skills most often in practice.

As for the wifi situation, I'm currently pondering whether replacing the existing Eero mesh system with a Wifi7 one would be a worthwhile thing to do, but the cost to do so is a big barrier to overcome.  There is a Deco (TP-Link) system available for around £250 which is by far the most cost-effective option I've seen for this, but that's still a lot to consider spending on something that isn't fundamentally broken.

I think this has potential to be a fascinating thread, so will look forward to reading it as it grows.

@sheriff-fatman wow circular saw, that’s high end dangerous territory. I would have used a reciprocating saw on the baseboard if it wouldn’t come away, or a jig saw if it did and workbench to hold it tight. I have flashbacks to the Kenny Everett Show when he was demonstrating how to use a saw, next shot he had his hand bandaged implying he’d cut a few fingers off in the process.

@sheriff-fatman just saw the wifi7 post. It’s only worth doing if you have receiving equipment wifi7 compliant

my current phone is wifi5, as soon as it logs on the wifi, it pulls everything down to that level.

think of it like a load of Ferraris on a country road following a tractor, speed will be limited to the tractor, which btw could be a Lamborghini, yes the company made tractors in the 50’s 🙂

Posted by: @agentgeorge

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@sheriff-fatman wow circular saw, that’s high end dangerous territory. I would have used a reciprocating saw on the baseboard if it wouldn’t come away, or a jig saw if it did and workbench to hold it tight. I have flashbacks to the Kenny Everett Show when he was demonstrating how to use a saw, next shot he had his hand bandaged implying he’d cut a few fingers off in the process.

This was to cut it after removal while it was attached to a workbench inherited from the previous house owner, as I would never be able to justify buying one.  It's a cheap one from Wickes that we bought earlier this year (ironically to cut shelving to go into the cupboard from where the gas boiler was removed when the heat pump was installed).

I may have unintentionally turned 'man saws plank of wood' into a far more exciting sounding task than the reality.

I grew up watching those Kenny Everett shows and seeing the Reg Prescott sketches as a small child probably helped to define why my DIY skill range is at the level it is!

Posted by: @agentgeorge

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@sheriff-fatman just saw the wifi7 post. It’s only worth doing if you have receiving equipment wifi7 compliant

my current phone is wifi5, as soon as it logs on the wifi, it pulls everything down to that level.

think of it like a load of Ferraris on a country road following a tractor, speed will be limited to the tractor, which btw could be a Lamborghini, yes the company made tractors in the 50’s 🙂

Thanks.  The main driver for looking into this is that a newly added PS5 in the conservatory fails to get sufficient speed to stream any games, rather than requiring them to be downloaded, and it's returning a consistent 'insufficient speed' message despite the Virgin Broadband reportedly delivering 350MB/s to the house according to the Eero app.  I'll have to check whether or not this would meet the criteria for improvement, but I suspect not.