Building a Better Thermostat

After returning from a recent trip that occurred during the middle of a heat wave. I arrived home to find my apartment quite hot, at least 45C inside. Needless to say it wasn’t the most comfortable way to come home after 15 days out of town, I decided it was time for me to do something about it to address this so I didn't come home to that unpleasant surprise again. Normally, this problem is solved by having a thermostat which controls the air conditioning. However, my apartment did not have a thermostat. So I decided to build one using open source software. This talk will cover how I went about solving my problem using existing software and protocols like home-assistant, MQTT, and also some new software that was created for this. It'll also discuss how using open software and home automation I was able to solve my issue but also make cooling my apartment smarter. [229]