Insulation Efficiency of Electric Hot Water Heaters

From kaspars.net 4 months ago in Blogs Podcasts

With electric hot water heaters it is possible to use smart sockets with energy meter capabilities to measure the electricity consumption when the water is not actually used and is heated only to maintain the set temperature. It can be assumed that all of the added heat is equal to...

Articles from Kaspars Dambis

Notes on Nilan Compact P2 GEO3 Polar

From kaspars.net 3 weeks ago in Blogs Podcasts

It is a single unit for ventilation with heat recovery and a heat pump against the exhaust air for heating or cooling the incoming air and producing domestic hot water, and another heat pump against ground loop for additional heating...

How Much Insulation is Too Much?

From kaspars.net 1 month ago in Blogs Podcasts

The diminishing returns of insulation thickness is a legend referenced by many builders and architects which is actually incorrect. It is often paired with financial payback calculations that don’t consider the full range of insulation benefits. The legend states that...

Notes on Tuya Air Quality Sensors

From kaspars.net 11 months ago in Blogs Podcasts

These are two devices with an identical air quality sensor for PM2.5 and PM10 (boxes with metal cover in the middle), temperature and humidity (top center) that are connected to Tuya controllers with either WiFi or Zigbee radio. The 6in1...

Using Ventilation Air for Heating and Hot Water

From kaspars.net 11 months ago in Blogs Podcasts

The Passive House standard has two magic numbers related to the heating and cooling requirements for buildings — 15kWh is the maximum allowed heating and cooling demand per square meter per year and 10W maximum allowed instantaneous heating or cooling...

Notes on Zemismart HomeKit Zigbee Hub

From kaspars.net 11 months ago in Blogs Podcasts

Zemismart ZMHK-01 is one of the few hubs that is compatible with Apple HomeKit and can expose non-HomeKit Zigbee devices in the Home app similar to the Aqara G2H camera hub. Behind the scenes it uses the Tuya TYZS4 radio...

Use Hiking DDS238-2 ZN/S Energy Meter with Home Assistant

From kaspars.net 11 months ago in Blogs Podcasts

Hiking DDS238-2 ZN/S is a cheap €25 single phase energy meter which can measure import and export energy in addition to all the standard parameters, and has a Modbus interface over RS485. I used this Modbus registry information to create...

Use Aqara G2H Zigbee Camera Hub with Home Assistant

From kaspars.net 11 months ago in Blogs Podcasts

Aqara G2H (ZNSXJ12LM) is a really nice Zigbee hub and indoor camera with official HomeKit support. Of course it runs Linux so people have discovered ways to connect it to Home Assistant which exposes most of your HomeKit devices to...

Notes on Gree Amber Nordic GWH09YD-S6DBA1 Heat Pump

From kaspars.net 1 year ago in Blogs Podcasts

As part of an experiment to add domestic water heating capabilities to conventional mini-split ACs, I purchased an air-source heat pump Gree GWH09YD-S6DBA1 which has an inverter controlled compressor and an electronic expansion valve that allows it to work efficiently...

Notes on MySensors

From kaspars.net 1 year ago in Blogs Podcasts

MySensors is a great project for building IoT devices but it tries to do many things — define a general serial communications protocol (similar to ModBus, CAN), provide a software library for many hardware devices on top of the Arduino...

WireGuard on MikroTik RouterOS

From kaspars.net 1 year ago in Blogs Podcasts

WireGuard can be used for a lot of things: Managing router configuration remotely behind NATed networks such as mobile connections. Connecting to your home network while on the road for home automation and safe internet access. Connecting several networks over...