I bought a Ninjablock.
You can't actually buy them anymore because the company has wholly moved on to their new offering, the Ninja Sphere (https://ninjablocks.com/ninjasphere/buy).
The NinjaBlock annoyed me in the end because it was for programmers only, and was not robust. e.g. if you turn it off on the wall (or have a power cut) the CPU can blow. I got it repaired under warranty but they told me that the solution was to do design a circuit myself that would do a soft shut-down when power is taken away. Screw that! Any time I had any issue with it they were like "oh that's easy you just <blah blah blah blah whole lot of technical linux steps>". And their 'cloud' seemed to reset every few weeks.
If I did it again (which I'm about to) I would consider either
1/ a 433MHz cape for a Raspberry Pi (cheap overall and standalone)
2/ a 433MHz USB device on my mac mini that is always on (requires a computer that's always on)
Then for either of those I would write software that would run on the device and communicate with your phone via an app or website.
Remote controlled sockets
When I set my system up, Maplins was selling these in packs of 4 for 20 quid or something - cheap!
http://www.rapidonline.com/Electrical-Power/Conrad-Radio-Controlled-Switch-Socket-433MHz-Frequency-4-Channel-544123
.. and they were 3kW rated so you could plug a 2.5kW heater into them (unlike one above which is 2kW)
I also got these for behind the wall installations of lights (only 1kW rated..)
http://www.intertechno.at/produkte/empfaenger/schalter/CMR-1000.html
And this one for behind the wall installations of heaters (3.5kW rated)
Since Maplins have discontinued those plug-in sockets I would have to check whether their new model works (specs look right)
If I did it again, I would probably keep going with the 433Mhz actuators because they were so damn cheap. Maybe I would ensure that my radio frequency controller was compatible with other systems just in case, though (e.g. ZigBee, Z-Wave...)
While the dreamt-of goal was to have elegant wall-mounted heaters, we took the cheap option and got a flock of these Dragon 2.5kW heaters.
Here's a link on Google shopping
Why?
Because
- per-heater they were cheap: around 100 pounds instead of 400+++ pounds for an electrified oil column heater that you like the look of,
- they were very effective: the heated air rises in a column that circulates around the room very effectively, and
- it was easy: you just plug them into one of those wall-plugs above and go.
If I did it again, I would have a serious think about investing in elegant wall-mounted radiators that I liked because having these oil column heaters in each room was a little yuck.
NOTE: we needed to get the non-digital ones so that we could turn them on and off at the wall effectively (using those remote switches). If you get a digital heater that resets when you turn it off/on then it won't combine with the wall plugs.
Temperature sensing
The ninjablock came with some 433Mhz temp sensors ... they were OK but sometimes I had a little trouble with the range until I got the base unit's aerials in just the right position. Need to do research into what to use instead now that Ninjablocks discontinued their block & temp sensor offering.
Software
I largely leveraged the ninjablocks cloud/rules platform, and created my own website 'remote control' because their cloud interface was waaaayyyyy too slow and cumbersome for the phone. I put a shortcut to my website on my phone's home screen and when I clicked it I would see something like this
If I did it again, I would probably have a similar concise website like in the image above, but maybe add to the platform some email communication too. ("Hello, this is the house - you seem to have gone out. Should I turn the heating off? Click Yes or No.")
(You could detect when people have gone out by their phone disappearing from the wifi network)
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