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A Good Reception

If you are thinking nice snacks and drinks I’m sorry to disappoint: not entertainment, but radio signals sent from sensor to hub. Not every temperature and humidity reading will make it to the hub, for onward journey to ‘the cloud’, if there are obstacles or a fair distance to travel. So how can we pamper […]

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A mid-price fix for TRVs

Thermostatic radiator valves cause all kinds of issues in community buildings – users disagree about the settings, wrench them on and off, and then they break. It doesn’t help that most people think that they higher they are set, the faster the space will heat up. That’s not true. They just either let the hot […]

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Off they go

The stock of thermal monitors has been growing, but now it’s time to send them out to those engineers in the first group who have a venue and group who want to improve the comfort and carbon footprint of their building. Not all the boxes look the same. Firstly, there are sensors – with the […]

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Sensor Accuracy

We use inexpensive DHT22 temperature and relative humidity sensors, so we don’t assume they are reliable. Instead we compare them with each other and with the most common off-the-shelf devices we see in use, Lascar EL-WIN-USB loggers. Our Lascars claim accuracy of 2.25%RH in the range 20-80% RH. Years back, we had some engineering students […]

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Our monitor design

We’ve spent several months now designing and testing the sensor devices before settling on the final design. It’s not something our participating groups or engineers need to know about, but there are some people who want to know how they work, and why they are the way they are. There are two types – standalone […]

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Monitoring devices

Being able to see what the temperature of a space does over time can throw up some real surprises. Like the proverbial tree in the forest, who can be sure what happens in the night when no one is around? One part of HeatHack’s programme involves placing a small device in the building that measures […]