Will Webcontrol Work For Me?

[chrisl]

  I am wanting to control my wood boiler, domestic hot water, my Home HVAC system in heat and cool mode and house humidity.  I can hadle the electronics part of this but I have no idea or experience on how to program in PLC logic.
 
If this will work is thier someone out thier that can do the programing for me?
 
Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
 
 

 

[Tschmidt]

I'm using WebControl to manage our little greenhouse and another for wood stove/hot water. I started doing simple stuff and worked up from there.
 
Programming is pretty easy. If you are able to design the hardware the same concepts (registers, logic operations, etc) are used to write the code. I guess you could contract someone to program your design but might be prohibitively expensive.
 
Given how cheap the units are my suggestion is to purchase one and play with it. Build up confidence writing the code. If you run into problems you can always post question on this forum.
 
/tom

 

[Efried]

The learning curve is steep once you  copy and paste code, but then you have to be acquainted with looping and various delays in order to sort out deficiencies in the code. There is no possibility to document your code easily and there is no tracing. This makes error less code difficult to achieve.
So I would refrain from controlling hot water systems which may explode.

 

[chrisl]

Wood boiler is an open system, domestic hot water has a built in failsafe, ie T&P valve. I'm not worried about this setup exploding, the system is currently being served by outdated aquastats.  What i am more intersted in is controlling the system to reduce wood consumption, maintian better control over comfort in the home and remote monitoring and control when I am away. 
 
My next question is there software out there that is GUI, that makes programing I/O and varibles easier than writing PLC code that will communicate with the WC board?
 
What I want to achive is this:
 
1. Control Boiler Temp with Draft Solenoid Damper and Draft Blower
2, Control Domestic Water Circ Pump based on Boiler Temp and Domestic Hot Water Heater Temp.
3. Control House Temp level with HVAC water pump with a 2 Deg offset to engage Gas Furnace, and Control Furnace Blower.
4. Control House Humidity

 

[Efried]

I'm totally with you, just have a look at the PLC INSIDE the WC or check out the BRE version.

My next question is there software out there that is GUI, that makes programing I/O and varibles easier than writing PLC code that will communicate with the WC board?

 

[CAI_Support]

I think the best bet is PLC version, it will provide a lot more flexibility and programmability.
Although there is no GUI tool to generate PLC code, it is not that hard to do.  If you started trying, post your question on this forum, you will get a lot of support from members here.
 
There was one gentleman who made a wood burner control project using WC8 PLC.  He posted a lot of information on this forum in the past.