1.1 Executive Summary
Cost effective energy conservation continues to be a strong motivator of many innovations today. Electrical Engineers are in a unique position to directly help this. The original HVAC control system set out to tackle this problem with a unique handle on the central heating and air of a house. More importantly, this system has many applications beyond residential, leading to commercial buildings. Positively affecting the cost of controlling the climate of an environment can prove to be one of the most significant benefits to overall power use.
Instead of blindly turning on your air conditioner, the system is now smart. It will first run a check, depending on the user settings, of the outside temperature versus the inside temperature and may be able to adjust the house temperature in a much more efficient manner. An outdoor sensor was needed, and powered by an external power source sending information wireless by radio frequency. If the user set the system to Max Savings, the first of two air conditioners, the smaller unit, would first try to cool the house, followed by the bigger unit, then the two.
Unfortunately, user input was severely limited in the original unit, not providing as much freedom in behavior as needed. Further, connection to the internet is needed to provide the user the ability to constantly modify the settings desired.
Safety is also a new feature to be installed. An internal CO2 sensor will be applied to the main unit, constantly monitoring the internal atmosphere. If carbon dioxide increases too much, not only is an alarm possible, but the entire ventilation of the house. Further addition to cost effectiveness is the air flow. Many people change their air filter in given time intervals. Often this is forgotten and done too late, or done too slow. If air flow/air pollutant sensor was able to more accurately determine necessary interval of filter exchange, not only is money saved, but the air itself is safer. On top of all the cost saving and safety aspects, we are looking to add a setting for the users enjoyment. Mood Scents were planned but not executed earlier. The intent is to be able to control a room’s scent via the main control unit with a dispenser inside of the vent in selected rooms. The user will be able to select the desired times that this will the dispersed.
Lastly, control of all vents in the house will be added. In order to even more control the cost effectiveness of the HVAC unit, select rooms will have their vents opened or closed in selected times. There are already vents with efficient close hatches, it will be up to our project to get the signal to all vents controlling the actual selected temperature of individual rooms. In Max Savings, it could be selected that only one main room needs air control, while some rooms may never be entered. Motion sensors will also be explored.
Whether or not we continue to use the same micro-controller as the original project will be researched and discussed in the research section. The original micro-controller was a PIC, made by microchip. If it is the best option for the end use of this unit, it will be used and expanded upon. The visual unit of the system used an ARM processor in a very limited environment. A new display will be done, and the entire operating system with all the added user controls will be added to the ARM processor that we choose to run the touch screen interface. Ease of use is just as important and giving the user the freedom of options.
Few things are more aggravating that the heater getting kicked on when the house is not cold because your roommate or spouse has poor blood circulation. Running and exercise can increase blood circulation but the easiest thing for many to do is simply turn on the heat. Likewise it is both the time consuming process of opening windows when it is cold enough to cool your living area with outside air. The other disadvantages of letting fresh air in from windows can be both bugs and safety concerns in that some may feel they might not want to fall asleep or leave the house while the windows are open for several hours. The cost of heating or cooling an entire house when there are more efficient ways of doing so but because those ways aren’t easy or aren’t convenient or for reasons simply because one individual who is in another room sleeping likes it colder or hotter than the other individual in the same house doesn't make fiscal sense. If it were possible to grab an already efficient HVAC system and fine tune it to localize heating/cooling and make it easy and convenient to program the HVAC system for the user efficiency and comfort would go go up.
With the surging cost of oil and thus energy more efficient ways of consuming electricity becomes more important and systems that use to be too expensive to consider are quickly becoming attractive investments. Central heating and air account for one of the largest percentages of the energy budget.
Another interest is safety. CO2 accumulation above a certain level can be bad for someone’s health. Having the HVAC system of a house automatically vent the house when harmful gas accumulation occurs is a great idea for preventing harm. We discuss such an idea in the CO2 section of this paper with fires and cooling the house to prevent a worsening situation, however the idea is applicable to other areas. For instance upon air quality detection indicate a need for filtration a system could be designed to have UV lights and filtration via HEPA filters or ventilation of the room only when harmful gases are detected not only make the air cleaner and the environment safer but are more economical than have these systems on at all times.
Going beyond safety and cost efficiency, having the added pleasures in life are a strong motivation. We can paint our rooms different colors, and have different TV's playing different shows in different rooms, as well as listen to different music in different rooms, why not allow our nose to enjoy differences per room? It would be neat to have mood or scent parameters chosen by a user possibly in a per room basis, either activated by the HVAC fan or timed. We would like to take a previous HVAC system, debug it, and further the use and efficiency of the system. Adding web interface through WI-FI is a main goal as is allowing user adjustable controls. CO2 sensors need to be added to the house for safety, and the scent feature needs to be implemented. The operating system on the unit needs to go beyond simply display without functionality, but actual functionality and user programmability.
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