I’ve been keeping an eye on the Raspberry Pi for a while now.

What’s a Raspberry Pi?
The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming

As someone with a history of fiddling with computers since the ZX81 in the early 1980′s the Pi held an immediate appeal for me. Additionally, something at the barn that has always frustrated me is the disjointed nature of the heating system – The inputs; a multi-fuel stove & solar thermal hot water panels, are not well coupled to the outputs; underfloor heating (UFH) and upstairs radiators. The water in the thermal store is heated and is either vented to an upstairs radiator if it exceeds a predefined temperature or preferably to the UFH or radiators by pushing up the required temperature on the in room thermostats to a level above the current room temperature. I want to add a little more ‘intelligence’ to the system – if there’s a tank full of reasonably hot water then dump it into the UFH if it’s cold downstairs or switch off the UFH if the water temperature is too low in comparison to the room temperature and so on.

The Pi, as a small low-cost, low power computer, using the kind of software I’m comfortable with may be just the ‘brain’ this system requires. I just need to learn some electronics.

The Pi has only recently been launched, trending on Twitter more strongly than Lady Gaga at one time! So I thought I’d mention my idea to the people from Pi…

barnconversion
@Raspberry_Pi got an idea to use a R_Pi as a controller for my complex heating system – now just need to a) get a Pi & b) learn electronics!
Mar 08, 4:39 PM viaTwitter for Android

To which @Raspberry_Pi replied:

Raspberry_Pi
@barnconversion Have you visited our forums? If you post in the projects section, we’d love to help you get started.
Mar 08, 4:41 PM viaweb

So off I went to the forum and discovered several useful threads…

1-wire sensors for heating control
Smart home energy monitor
Thermostat

Those gave me plenty of areas for further research…

• 1-wire
• I2C connector
• DS9490R USB adaptor for 1 wire
• GPIO-based 1-wire driver in the kernel
• LinkUSB device
• I2C bridges attached to the Pi’s I2C interface
• http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/ – Nanodes
• Central Heating / Water controller … hardware interfacing using GPIO pins

Looks like I’ve got my hands full. Plenty to research. Lucky that there’s such a long waiting list to get your hands on a Pi – plenty of time for homework.

I’ve been rattling on about the barns roof trusses / A-frame a fair bit recently, both on the forum and the roof post in my Anatomy of… series.

Well here’s quite a nice photograph of the real thing…

For reference, the photograph shows the right hand side of the two furthest trusses that you can see on the ‘before’ photograph contained in the Anatomy of… post linked to above.

Fake Arabia meets Carmarthenshire sunshine… a rare and beautiful thing…

(Sitting on my newly tiled window sills.)

…finishing touches…continued…

Cosmetic pointing: I completed the small but time consuming amount of cosmetic pointing that needed doing to fill the cracks caused by cutting the openings through the internal masonry walls. This was a case of touching-up and filling cracks with a ‘carefully’ blended lime mortar that I made up from crushed up sweepings of the dried mortar that had crumbled off the wall, pit sand and some fresh lime putty. Read more on my cosmetic pointing post.

Tiling the window sills: I used left-over travertine mosaic & small brick shaped tiles to tile all the remaining windows sills – the kitchen one had already been done. I was nice to get back to tiling and to use up the tiles, adhesive and cleaning & coating chemicals that we had left over from the kitchen and floor tiling. I’m pleased with the finished job, even TC, who didn’t see the need for tiling the sills has expressed approval.

Painting the door frames: Although the internal doors have been in for a while now, I never quite got around to painting the frames. Priming, undercoating and glossing being three of my least favourite activities. But during February I bit the bullet and had a go at the first one – the door between the utility room and the kitchen. I wasn’t entirely sure which parts of the door to paint, which to leave untouched and / or which to whiten and wax so a proof-of-concept was in order. As it transpires, I think a simple white lining, frame and architrave looks best with the untreated, natural oak doors.

Flue Guard: I’ve been working on this for a while and have eventually finished constructing a guard to go around the flue that runs through the second bedroom. The purpose of the guard is to stop anyone (especially small children) from coming into contact with the flue when a fire is burning in the stove and the flue has become hot. I couldn’t find an off-the-shelf solution that exactly fit the bill so I made my own from perforated sheet metal, aluminium ‘L’ shaped strips and a wooden base with the metal parts attached together using a resin based ‘welding’ gel (basically two tubes of paste that you mix together, apply to the surfaces you want to join and allow to set). Hopefully it will fit the bill as far as building reg’s are concerned. The reg’s (Document J Building Regs 2010, section 1.45) state:

‘where a chimney passes through a … storage space … providing a guard…’

Photographs to follow.

A couple of interesting posts on the much neglected forum recently…

Justin is a cabinet maker looking to gain experience from a barn conversion – post on his forum topic if you think you may have an opportunity for him.

lornapotter is looking for options on how to open up the first floor of barn conversion that she is about to undertake. Waist high tie-beams currently make the space unusable. I attempted to point out some of the options, but I’m sure there are more – please take a look at the More head height required topic on the forum.