Re: Car Heater control ?

["Andy Laurence" <andylaurence@xxxxxxx>]

<< Ideally I would have a 12V heater in the car controlled in some
wireless
way from the house, and somehow bridged to Homeseer. >>

I had a thought about this.  A PC in the car (old laptop) with a wireless
network card in.  An interface to a 12v heating element and 12v computer
fan
to circulate air.  If the PC is P133 or faster, you can use it as an in-car
MP3 player as well.  The main problem you'd have is battery power.  The
laptop would need to be on 24/7 and as such, your battery should be able to
cope with this.

A laptop (my Tosh P133) runs at 2.7A @15vdc peak.  That's equivalent to
about 3.4A @ 12vdc.  You'd want to be able to leave the car for a couple of
days without using it, so you'd need a battery of 162Ah.  That's well
beyond
a car battery, or a caravan battery.  Of course, the laptop wouldn't run at
2.7A all the time.

I suppose another option would be a 418MHz tranceiver system.  They
transmit
serial data, so any device which is controlled via serial port at 9600bps
could be controlled.  They also run at under 100mA @12vdc (from memory),
which means that a 50Ah battery would go for over 4 days without trouble.
All this assumes you don't need the battery to start the car ;-)

Split charging system anyone?

Andy


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