I thought you guys might get a kick out of this. All a/c controls are centrally located in the administration building. Even for the schools, miles away. In our school district, if the temperature is too hot or cold in our classroom, we have to email our assistant principal who then has to make a phone call down to the admin building and talk to an administrator about the temperature in our classroom. It usually takes several hours for the assistant principal to respond and read the email and then takes the admin a another few hours or day to respond to her phone call to change the temperature.
Needless to say our rooms are often way too cold or hot alot of the times. And its usually because the heater and/or a/c has been running to much.
Depending on the age of the school your BAS should be able to communicate with standard web services.
A good project for some bright kid would be to make a web app for controlling your own classroom, not that any of the people involved will likely be all that committed to creating opportunities to really learn.
In my high school, the heating and a/c were set to predetermined temperatures. For example, the heater would be turned on during the winter, but if it happened to be a hot day during the winter, then the heater would be turned on anyway.
My school district and the other local ones are going to thermostats so it knows what the local temperature is, and will supposedly hit a predone range of temperature. This compares to my university- where some dorms you can vary in a range, to the nice, new 1000-ton, variable speed everything chilled water system covering 7 buildings were it is each building is X temperature.
When I was in school, all the thermostats were in locked clear plastic boxes with slots all the way along the bottom… Teachers would just stick scissors or something up in there and change the temperature as needed. Maybe that’s the kind of thing that prompted your district to make them all located in one building, away from those teachers.
Maybe that’s the kind of thing that prompted your district to make them all located in one building, away from those teachers.