Some ideas for improvement

Now that we have a very satisfactory unit in terms of basic functionality, power, cost an reliability, it's time to add some functionality to make more home information available via SMS. This is the first of a number of posts aimed at keeping track of desirable improvements.

• Add SD-card recording capability if Arduino memory will allow. Stack the SD shield I have now in NH.

• Change to variable reporting period. More frequent if very cold, or hot outside. 

• Add ability to change reporting period via SMS, from only some phone numbers.

• Add ability to turn on or off bits, maybe connected to alternate thermostats so temps can be set remotely.

• Add a/c electrical power monitoring and UPS backup. Since we are away a lot we need to know when power goes out so we can avoid food rotting in unpowered refrigerators. SInce the unit uses fairly low power a simple low-energy UPS could be used to keep it running while we measure a/c power using a small wall-wart and optical isolator and single digital input on Arduino.

• Monitor furnace burner  and well pump operational cycles using a/c wiring taps of some sort. Acquire on off times over longer periods and report some sort of statistics, like total running time each day, average, min and max running times, and average time between cycles. Store info in EEPROM (1 kbyte max) to ride through possible power outages.

• Keep temperature min/max/average for day.