Now this would be a neat feature for BOINC. Allow you to specify your location and have it check online weather info to find the outside temperature and allow you to suspend computation if it rises above a set point. It'd be great to help reduce air conditioning costs. Has anybody ever made an app to do this for BOINC?

I might even tinker with doing it myself but I would have to figure out how to get the weather info.

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For what do you need the *outside* weather or temperature info?
You only need the info about the temperature inside your system. If it's too much over a certain limit, stop crunching or throttle it down, it never depends on the outside temperature, only on the temperature inside your system.

...my 2 cents...

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Aloha, Uli

The heat generated by the computers puts a heavy load on the AC. I want to throttle or stop them if it gets above say 90 degrees outside to help keep the duty cycle of the AC compressor down. The hotter it is outside the lower the efficiency of the AC unit so reducing it's usage when it's hot outside is a good thing.

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Try Fred's Tthrottle app. It doesn't use the outside temperature but it does pauze Boinc if the temperatures are too high.

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Seti@Netherlands website

I might even tinker with doing it myself but I would have to figure out how to get the weather info.

You can use e.g. OpenWeatherMap free weather API
http://openweathermap.org/api

Full list of sites offering Weather API is long:
http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory/1?apicat=Weather


Use 'Wget for Windows' to get the file:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm

I tested with only this .exe (I put it in D:\WINDOWS\system32\)
http://users.ugent.be/~bpuype/wget/

With command like:
wget "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=London&mode=xml&units=metric" -O weather.txt

Parse weather.txt to find:
<temperature value=


Use boinccmd.exe to pause BOINC (3600 s = 1 hour pause (will resume automatically after an hour))
boinccmd.exe --set_run_mode never 3600

To resume BOINC in the previous state:
boinccmd.exe --set_run_mode never 1

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

If you know the time of day it generally gets warmer you could just restrict processing for those hours.

My condo starts to heat up around 2 or 3PM when the sunlight comes the corner of the building. Then it lasts until around 8pm at sunset.

So for me I would tell BOINC not to run between 2PM & 9PM.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

You could do something completely different: get some flexible A/C ducting and route your computer's exhaust air to the outside.

It's a bit of a diy project but the best part is you get to use a lot of duct tape. Might not be very aesthetic, if that's important.

It might look something like this:

http://www.slashgear.com/geek-cools-computer-with-cold-winter-air-12125969/

I have seen a similar ducting system a long time ago, but as a Power Supply exhaust duct - it fed into a 6" plastic pipe which went up two storeys.
The draft created by 2 machines running at the bottom was so strong the computers ran for years with no PS fans.

BTW: The guy who wrote the article did not check his facts! Condensation only occurs when hot (and moist) air is sucked through cold hardware, not the other way round.

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Flying high with Team Sicituradastra.

You could do something completely different: get some flexible A/C ducting and route your computer's exhaust air to the outside.

More effective to use it to draw cooling air in from the outside (as in the link). However hot it is outside, it's always hotter in the room with the computer running in it.

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Grant
Darwin NT