I have been logging my furnace heating on/off times for a number of years using various devices for signal transmission to a computer. During some years I have also downloaded temperature data from Weather Underground to compare to my fuel usage. Some of the analysis I have done includes determining at what point night time temperature setback becomes less efficient, how my gas fireplace affects furnace run times, automatically uploading data to graphing services, etc.
This year I decided to use a pair of Moteno's. The sending unit is located at the furnace and is connected to the furnace's gas valve via a relay (schematic attached). The sequence of operation is the relay pulls when the furnace opens its gas valve, this causes A0 to go from 0V to 3.3V or a 0 reading to a 1023 reading, the Arduino send sketch detects that change and sends out a "1" instead of a "0". It sends a message out to the receiving Moteino every 2 seconds regardless of whether it is a "1" or "0". This unit is using the attached (send.ino) sketch. Since I am using a 5V wall transformer for power, I didn't utilize any power conservation.
The receiving Moteno is connected to a small Windows netbook via a FTDI USB port adapter. This Moteino simply sends whatever it sees out the serial port to my Windows computer. So, it passes a message every 2 seconds.
A Python script (python_moteino.py) is monitoring the serial port for data. Even though it sees a message every 2 seconds, only changes are written to a csv file.
No doubt my quick & dirty Python script could use some enhancement. My Arduino send sketch is basically Felix's send sketch with some modifications. I haven't included the Arduino receive sketch, because it is exactly the same one Felix includes under his examples.
So far I am very pleased with the Moteinos. Programming is much easier than the Xbees and Synapses I have used in the past.
