PAUL WILLIAMSON Wrote: > Does AMX have a thermostat that can control both a baseboard hot water > heat zone and an a/c zone? My wife is redecorating and wants to > eliminate one of the thermostats in both places where the systems are > less than 4 feet apart. > > Ideally, I want to control my heat and a/c from one of the > squeezeboxes in the home, so it is important I get this right. > > Thanks, > Paul I'm not an A/C guy. But, back when I had a baseboard heating system, it used standard thermostats (24V) with standard W1 heat calls.
So, assuming that your baseboard heat system uses a standard thermostat (it probably does), then your question degnerates into: "Does AMX have a thermostat that controls both Heat and Cooling?" The answer: Yes, they do. However, I don't use it. AMX outsources their thermostat from Aprilaire. The Aprilaire 8870 thermostat is a communicating thermostat that is highly configurable to control heat, cooling, heat pumps, etc. The AMX version of the thermostat integrates with the NetLinx via the ICSnet bus. They did that by putting an RS-485 <-> ICSnet converter on it. The standard Aprilaire thermostats just talk RS-485. Note that NetLinx RS-232 interfaces talk RS-485 as well. So, since I already had Aprilaire thermostats, I had no need to replace them. Furthermore, if you look carefully at the screen shot at: http://sourceforge.net/project/scree...group_id=62827 you'll note that there's an HVAC button there. This brings up an HVAC screen that allows me to control my 4-zone HVAC system. It's driven by four Aprilaire 8870 thermostats. And, naturally, the HVAC code can be found on SourceForge! ;-) So, your choices are: Get the Aprilaire thermostat from Aprilaire and use my (open source) module to control it. Or, if you prefer, get the Aprilaire thermostat from AMX, then use their (closed source) module to control it. Kinda a preference thing; they're effectively the same thermostat, they just interface slightly differently. And, it would only be proper to point out: The Aprilaire 8870 thermostat could almost certainly be controlled via a Crestron system. This is seriously off topic to the Squeezebox and SlimServer. To get back on topic: While it took a while (and many more features in the SlimServer CLI than it had at the time), it was reasonably straight-forward for me to create a SlimServerMod module to drive the SlimServer via the AMX NetLinx system. But it was a lot of development hours (both on my part and Fred's part). And, finally, FWIW: I'm working on the SlimServerMod module as we speak to add new features for SlimServer v6.5. The next version of the module will control: Internet Radio, async feedback, playlist editing on screen, etc. -- Jeff -- Jeff ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jeff's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=49 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=20703 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
