An Arduino-Based Thermal Comfort System

Abstract

Conventional centralized heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems cannot provide office workers with personalized thermal comfort because workers in a single zone share a common air handling unit and thus a single air temperature. Moreover, they heat or cool an entire zone even if a single worker is present, which can waste energy. Manual switching of these devices for thermal comfort have been employed over the years to control indoor temperatures and this manner of switching ON/OFF comes with challenges of power wastage hence wear and tear of parts. Both drawbacks were addressed in this project which was intended to design and construct a reliable thermal comfort system. This paper focuses on the replacement of manual settings of heating/air conditioning systems in accordance with temperature so that it detects temperature variations automatically and control the device effectively. The result of this work showed that the design regulates with more accuracy the temperature and humidity of an enclosure. The entire work was carried out in four stages using a modular design approach which includes Hardware design/Software design, simulation and physical construction. The project uses thermal sensor DHT11 and Atmega328p microcontroller on Arduino Uno board to control thermal comforting devices. The ranges of temperature used in this project include those below 20℃, between 20 to 25℃ and above 25℃ for effecting heating, normal and cooling regulations respectively.