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Joe Truncale is software engineer and all-around tinkerer. He's currently a Cloud Solutions Architect at Red Hat focusing on Kubernetes and OpenShift. He's spends a lot of his time crafting overly complicated solutions to comically simple problems.
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Thanks for the questions! The situation mentioned isn't unique to the ThermOS project. If a thermostat's batteries die or there is a power loss, a home heating system will already fail. I'm currently working on some alerting/failsafe support for the project as well, but the fact that it can be monitored remotely and controlled provides more stability than the existing heating solution.
I looked into Homematic and this is why I didn't use them:
- They're not readily available in the US
- They're battery powered
- They're not Apple HomeKit compatible (without homebridge)
- Homematic costs $60 per thermostat (x7 in my case = $420) with $180 base station =~ $600 as opposed to $150 for my DIY setup
If I misunderstood any of that, I'd be happy to learn!
plus.. DIY was fun to build :)
Great point! I'll make sure to look into that for my policy.