Remote central heating :)

[jamiehamy]

My mate who inspired me to get a van in the first place was very interested in the Eberspacher when I fitted it. He's a bit of a technical guru and has since built me a module that lets me text the van and it will fire up the heater. It will also tell me whether the heater is actually on and what the inside temperature. Perfect for cold mornings or if we've been away and want the van toasty when we get back I'm so chuffed, thought I would share

Main limitation is that the van needs phone signal, which is a pity when we're in the Highlands but other than that, it's just a text to tell it to put the heating on or off. Next stage if to fit a theft deterrent, something simple that might indicate that it's got a tracker and have thieves abandon it. I need to save up for a proper tracker, so this will be perfect.

[ringo]

Cool. Any idea what device he used to do this?
You can buy a GSM switch for about £100 which will do the job. Is it one of those?

Ringo

[jamiehamy]

I'll ask him, but basically it was an ancient old GSM phone with a sim, the computer cable and a small chip/processor on a board. There are 3 wires I think which go on to the Eberspacher PCB we tried using the wires but was much easier just going onto the PCB. To detect if the heating it on, the voltage across the LCD is used. To switch it on and off, we use a bridge across the button circuit as well and an integrated temperature sensor.

[ninja.turtle007]

There is a post from oldiebutgoodie on how to do this using an old mobile phone. Also how to do it with a garage remote control so you can start or stop the heater from inside the house.

[Aidan]

you could use the ignition disable function on the £60 tracker to switch it on/off but it wouldn't give you feedback and temp

[ninja.turtle007]

Here

https://club8090.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.p ... e#p7550531" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ringo]

I'm very interested to find out what that small chip on a board is

Cheers, Ringo

[jamiehamy]

Will find out and let you know

[jamiehamy]

So it`s a Microchip PIC16F876A. Program is written in C. Does that help? I asked about using a Raspberry Pi, but would be more complex. J

[ghost123uk]

This all sounds very "cool"

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