Greetings,
I had a hard time finding resources to automate my wood stove, so I pulled together various resources and with a bit of trial an error, I ended up getting a pretty stable system as it has run over the last 6 months. I am sharing the writeup that I put on my blog in two parts to hopefully help others who might be trying to do the same thing.
Harware Part
Software Part
Thanks so much.
That looks pretty cool, nice job! My next house (also the last one) is likely to have a wood burning stove so I’ll have to keep your project in mind, thank you for sharing!
Curious how well that damper position works. From the plot in the software page, looks like it bounces between full on and off. Probably want to look at the rate of change in the temperature? If temp increasing slightly, close damper for .5 seconds.
Looking to do similar with a wood boiler I’m using for a pool heater. Would be nice to not have to check it every 30 minutes.
The damper position is the most complicated part of the code. First I have a variable to track the position as the actuator doesn’t give position feedback. Then after calibrating, the template calculates the requested position of the damper. Then I compare the two and open or close the damper based on the difference. The whole system checks itself every minute and there are 10 “stops” I put into the actuator (based on seconds of movement). It does a wonderful job of closing as the stove gets hotter and opening as the stove gets colder.
While I never completely trust the system as it has the possibility of burning down the house, I am comfortable not having to be in the same room (I can check on the dashboard on my phone). Into my second season, it has consistently managed the fire to be very efficient.