My adventures in Woodstove Monitoring

[neil_s]

Would a small video screen showing a view through the glass doors of the stove almost serve the same purpose?

I was thinking with the popularity of home security systems it would be fairly easy to do.

I love what you are doing.

How long before you are tying it into controlling the woodstove?

It would but you'd lose the temperature, unless you were using a thermal camera. You'd also lose the proactive notifications.
I wanted the device to reveal the invisible data (temperature/rate of change of the temperature)

As for controlling the stove. I've thought about it. Honestly, I am staying away from active control for now for two reasons:

Safety: If a monitor fails, you just lose data. If an automatic air-intake motor fails, or the power cuts out, you could be stuck with a stove running wide open.

Retrofitting: Every stove has a different lever, knob, or damper. Building a robot hand that fits all of them is a pretty big engineering challenge.

 

[Fargo]

Another thought. I think someone else commented on this, but would it be possible to have a wireless sensor at the top of the chimney? Either magnetic or maybe clip onto the rain cap somehow? I think chimney sensor data could be valuable to monitor the actual heat at the top of the chimney to get a better idea of how warm it is for drafting and also how quickly creosote might be building up. But I think it would need to be wireless. I don't want to have to put more holes through my room or drag wires around the house.

 

[neil_s]

Very nice! I like this idea. I just got my first stove installed a few weeks ago and I'm looking for a way to monitor the stove remotely. My stove is in the basement and I work out of the house. So I'm always around and running downstairs to check on it every half hour or so. I have done some over night burns, but like others I'm worried about burning down the house. So I appreciate something with an alarm that can be on the unit as well as remote.

The lamp box is nice looking and provides me with the basic info I need at a quick glance. I don't like installing everything on an app that requires me to share all my personal data. But I'm not entirely opposed to an app (Android please). Having an app that provides temps and an alarm on my phone while I'm away from the house, and unable to monitor the box or the stove itself, would be nice.

I would be interested in this. How is the data being transfered. Is it bluetooth or wifi? Wifi would be nice for a whole house system. (Especially if you had a little desktop app for Linux) Also could you use 2 (or more) lamps? One in my bedroom and one in my office? Finally I think it would be good if you had multiple (2-3) inputs . So I could measure stove top temps, flue temps and other. I have a double wall pipe, but I'm nervous about drilling a hole in it, so I am tempted with the magnetic sensor that could be used on stovetop or pipe and maybe later add a 3rd sensor with a pipe probe.

Thank you! your use case is exactly why I built this.

To answer your questions:

1. Privacy: Luckily, the app is very lightweight on personal data. It just needs an email + password to login, or you can use Google/Apple login if you prefer. I have builds ready for both iOS and Android.
2. Connectivity: It uses WiFi, not Bluetooth. Bluetooth just wasn't good enough for reliable whole-home coverage (especially from a basement).
3. Multiple Lamps: The architecture is actually set up exactly for this. The sensor publishes the temperature to the network, and you can have 'N' number of lamps subscribed to that publisher. So if you wanted a lamp in the bedroom and another in the office both listening to the same stove, you can absolutely do that.
4. Multiple Inputs: That is definitely on the roadmap since so many folks have asked!

Let me know if you'd be interested in beta testing this, I'd be happy to figure out a way to get a unit into your hands to try out."

 

[begreen]

I like the way you are developing this. In some households like ours, there are multiple people running the stove. My wife runs it very differently than I do. The visual indicator would appeal to her. She's not a numbers person.

 

[neil_s]

I like the way you are developing this. In some households like ours, there are multiple people running the stove. My wife runs it very differently than I do. The visual indicator would appeal to her. She's not a numbers person.

Thank you!

I am beta testing this and looking for volunteers. Please reach out if you'd like to help beta test.