Help with (hopefully) very simple switch.

pattygook

Hey all,
This is my first post on this forum and I was hoping to get some hopefully simple help.
I've got an old Basic Stamp 1 Project Board I used a while back in high school and now I'm living in a dorm with central air. Since I can't control the temperature of my room, I'd like to make a book that goes over the vent and seals it shut until I open it with a BS1 servo motor. I'd like to hook up a household thermostat to be the trigger for my servo, but I've never hooked up any kind of switch to my BS1. Can someone give me any simple code or help on how to hook up a thermostat. Can I check for continuity with a BS1? Or could I put voltage out one pin, through the thermostat, and check for that voltage on another pin? I'm pretty proficient at java, but I'd completely forgotten the syntax for my old BS1.

Thanks All For the Help,
Patrick

Mike Green

A lot depends on what kind of thermostat you're using. It's actually more work to figure out how your thermostat works and whether you have a simple switch closure or you need a power source for the thermostat than it might be to use a simple temperature sensor like the DS1620 (www.parallax.com/Store/Components/AllIntegratedCircuits/tabid/154/txtSearch/temperature/List/0/SortField/4/ProductID/84/Default.aspx). There are plenty of examples of the use of this and it's straightforward to use it with the BS1. Look at the AppKit documentation on the webstore page for the DS1620 (link above).