Where I’m at, the temps flip-flop day to day, even hour to hour. In the morning it’s 35° outside, and by evening it’s 79°. I gave up keeping up with the temps and shut my unit off for the time being.
My question is why can’t HVAC units be programmed to say that if the outside temp reaches n° and the inside temp reaches m° cold, turn on the heat; conversely, if the outside temp rises to n° and the inside temp reaches m°, then turn on the AC?
My thermostat already knows the outside and inside temp, but I still have to manually switch it back and forth. I want a system that I can just set it and forget it all year round.
There are a lot of smart engineers that design those.
If you have an external temperature measurement it helps. But it can’t see the difference between a cloudy day and a sunny day.
If you connect it to an online weather service that helps, but it’s still hard for it to know how much the sun heats your home due to big south facing windows for example.
This is something AI could be useful for. Feed it forecast, inside, outside temp and let it figure out how to balance those against each other for your home. I’m not sure there are many systems like this on the market yet.
You don’t need to go to that level of complication.
Two sensors in combination, one that detects current heat input one that detects absorbed heat. These modules would be placed about the outer walls.
Then calculate how much heat is going to radiate into the building the rest of the day.
And it can compensate.
We don’t need to be more than a fraction of a degree off and a system like that would be amply accurate.
What kind of sensor do you suggest for measuring that? I’m genuinely curious why they are not industry standard.
My guess is price and/or robustness. The RTCs we use are cheap and durable.