I’ve been made an interesting offer by Nest – they will give me one of their spectacular thermostats (and a smoke / CO detector), if I can find a fun open-source use of their API and write it up.
I already explained that I’m not a programmer, although I’ve been experimenting with python for the last couple of weeks, but I’ll happily give it a shot.
Step 1: Brainstorming.
What would I want to build to extend the functionality of a wifi-connected smart thermostat? The first thing that comes to mind is making a twitter account for it, and having it tweet the temperature in my home. I figure’d that would have been done so many times before that there would be nothing left to create, but a quick google search told me that was not the case.
What else? Well, I have a promo code for Twillio, and Nest’s API has functions for smoke and CO detection. I see an opportunity to create an alert to my phone if there’s an emergency at home. If the detector is downstairs, I’d rather it call the phone on my nightstand then sound an alarm where it is.
Do you, the avid reader, have any suggestions? What would you want your thermostat to do for you?
Hey!
So firstly, this is awesome. It’s great that you got this opportunity. I have two ideas although I don’t know if they’ve been done before.
1) Create a script that polls a public weather API for the weather in your area (ZIP code maybe?). Based on this data, you may want to raise or lower the temperature. For example, while I normally keep my place at 65°, during the really cold days in the winter I like my place to be a bit warmer to contrast outside.
2) If you’re running servers in your house, when CPU load is high it lowers the temperature of the room a bit to compensate. Together with the CPU fan, this helps keep the server cool and safe 🙂
Also, what is this? Use Disqus!
Thanks for the ideas! I’ll definitely try to incorporate both ideas as additional options. As for Disqus, So far I’m happy with how WordPress deals with comments. No need to fix what ain’t broke.
He said, before migrating comments to Disqus.
HA ha!