(Smart Home)
Lofts/attics are notorious for their temperature extremes so with lessons learned from my previous layout I have come up with a plan to (hopefully) deal with these and protect the model railway.
I have been getting into home automation / smart homes recently and have decided to use the Tapo brand made by TP-Link. It appears to be cheap and easy to set up with a good mobile app. I’m using one of their temperature/humidity sensors to control a pair of their smart plugs via a hub. The smart plugs work via your wi-fi but the sensor needs the Tapo hub as well. One turns on a small fan heater when it gets too cold (less than 10 degrees C) and the other turns on a portable air conditioning unit when it gets too hot (over 30 degrees C). The heater turns off again when the temp gets up to 13 degrees.
I also have a Tapo camera set up in the roof apex looking at a digital max/min thermometer. This has IR night vision so I can see the temperature without turning the light on. The temperature/humidity sensor also reports both on the Tapo app, with graphs of historical records.
The light switch has been replaced with a smart one and there is a contact sensor on the loft hatch so the light goes on/off as I open/close the hatch. The switch can also be operated remotely via the phone app.