Published April 17, 2018

Automatic A/C Vent Controller

A room's A/C vent is opened or closed based on temperature data gathered with a Particle Photon.

IntermediateFull instructions provided10 hours690

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Particle Photon

Temperature Sensor

Servos (Tower Pro MG996R)

Jumper wires (generic)

Breadboard (generic)

vent

Story

Sometimes the thermostat is out of your control.

But it's still possible to control the temperature in YOUR room. All you need is control over the vent's open/close state.

How it works

In this project 2 Particle Photons are used to provide temperature control to an individual room. The first photon uses a tmp36 temperature sensor to measure the room's ambient temperature. The second photon uses this data to decide whether the room's vent should be open or closed, given some desired temperature. It then opens/closes the vent using a servo motor with a crank-slider connecting it to the vent's slider.

Here's a video of it in action:

A live graph of the room temperature data can be found here.

A closer look at the circuitry:

1 / 3

Code

// This #include statement was automatically added by the Particle IDE.
#include <Ubidots.h>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
#define TOKEN "A1E-tc2PXtcBuFWr3W6fYN6JVn7JZAwriN"  // Put here your Ubidots TOKEN
#define varID "5ad5badac03f9751c8060bff"
Ubidots ubidots(TOKEN);

double desiredTemp = 80;
Servo servo;

void setup(){
servo.attach(3);
Particle.subscribe("currentTemp",toggleVent);
}

void loop() {
}



void toggleVent(const char *event, const char *data){
String stuff = "";
stuff = stuff + data;
double temp;
std::string tempString(stuff);
std::stringstream convert(tempString); 

if ( !(convert >> temp) )
    temp = 0;

if (desiredTemp>temp){
    //close vent
    servo.write(0);
}
else{
    servo.write(65);
}
    

}

// This #include statement was automatically added by the Particle IDE.
#include <Ubidots.h>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
#include <cmath>

#define TOKEN "A1E-tc2PXtcBuFWr3W6fYN6JVn7JZAwriN"  // Put here your Ubidots TOKEN
Ubidots ubidots(TOKEN);
double tempC = 0;
double tempF = 0;
String currTemp = "";
int sampleFreq = 1000;

void setup() {
    //get curr and desired
}

void loop() {
    currTemp = "";
    double raw = analogRead(2);    
    double v = raw * (3300.0/4095.0);
    tempC = (v-500.0)/10.0;
    tempF = tempC * 1.8 + 32.0;
    currTemp = currTemp + tempF;
    Particle.publish("currentTemp",currTemp,100,PUBLIC);
    ubidots.add("Room Temperature",tempF);
    ubidots.sendAll();
    delay(sampleFreq);
}

Credits

Jeremy Dean

1 project • 0 followers

Automatic A/C Vent Controller

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Story

Sometimes the thermostat is out of your control.

How it works

Here's a video of it in action:

A closer look at the circuitry:

Schematics

Temperature Sensor Photon

Vent Controller Photon

Code

ventcontroller.ino

roomtempsensor.ino

Credits

Jeremy Dean

Comments

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Automatic A/C Vent Controller

Automatic A/C Vent Controller

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Story

Sometimes the thermostat is out of your control.

How it works

Here's a video of it in action:

A closer look at the circuitry:

Schematics

Temperature Sensor Photon

Vent Controller Photon

Code

ventcontroller.ino

roomtempsensor.ino

Credits

Jeremy Dean

Comments

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