History
I'm a lifelong electronics enthusiast who had previously dabbled with various microcontrollers - mostly using some version BASIC to program them. For a living, I have previously been an HVAC guy and currently do controls work - which mostly means repairing, but sometimes designing and building, control systems for all manner of equipment. This is mostly electronics and electro-mechanical work.
Five years ago, a friend upgraded his multi-zone furnace system to include a multi-stage furnace and air conditioner, but was not able to find a controller that could do both multi-zone AND multi-stage. At the same time, I had just learned about the Raspberry Pi single-board-computer and its built-in GPIO pins, and decided that my friend's need was a good excuse to start learning C++ and how to use a Rasberry Pi. My first three C++ programs written were:
- HelloWorld.cpp - Prints "Hello World!" to the screen
- BlinkLED.cpp - Blinks and LED
- KiplingHeat.cpp - A multi-stage, multi-zone, HVAC controller.
KiplingHeat.cpp was a glorified microcontroller program that monitored the outputs of conventional thermostats, which were the only user input. If the user wanted to know what the controller was doing, they had to count the blinks of a status LED. OpenHVACControl is the descendent of KiplingHeat.cpp. Still a work in progress, it fills a real-world need while providing a project for me to refine my software design and architecture skills in the back end, and learn entirely new skills - namely HTML, Javascript, implementing REST APIs, and Android App development.
