Love Elevators? You Can Simulate an Elevator Control System with a Raspberry Pi

When elevators first became available, they were controlled manually. They required operators, just like trains and other vehicles, to control direction and speed. But, of course, it wasn’t too long before everyone realized that manual operation wasn’t necessary, as elevator movement is very constrained and predictable. Even so, elevator control systems are fascinating because they fulfill specific logistical requirements with maximum efficiency. If that kind of thing piques your interest, you’ll want to check out BorisDigital’s simulated elevator control system.

Unless you happen to own a building with several floors, you probably don’t have a real elevator that you can go tinkering with. If you’re one of the few people in our audience that does have an elevator, we still advise against that sort of thing. A simulated experience through mockups is a more practical alternative. But that doesn’t have to be boring and you can still get all of the fun of physical buttons, realistic operation, and genuine problem solving.

Boris achieved that with a system design consisting of two panel types: one for the elevator car and one for each floor. The system can handle multiple panels of the latter type. There is also a separate controller for directing a sort of hydraulic system that moves a miniature elevator car, which is an interesting addition if you want to see something moving.

The elevator car panel contains a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B single-board computer and it is the central “brain” of the whole system. That panel has a button for each floor, door close and door open buttons, an alarm button, and full-color LCD screen. That screen can display the current floor, as well as building information and even advertisements like you might see in a real tower. Boris also included an maintenance menu accessible through that panel interface.

The elevator call button panels for each floor contain Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W boards. Those are microcontroller development boards and not single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi in the elevator car panel. A Pico 2 W also controls the relays for the hydraulic system.

Each Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W board communicates with the elevator car’s Raspberry Pi 4 Model B through MQTT messages sent over WiFi, so they can go anywhere within range of the local WiFi network. In the real world, the hardware would be hardwired, but this is good enough for the simulated experience.

This gave Boris the ability to experiment with elevator control concepts, including the algorithms that elevators use to decide where to go when there are multiple simultaneous requests on different floors.