SmartVent

This project was developed for a UMBC Capstone project. The details have been posted here in thanks for the help provided by the staff at Particle (formerly Spark).

This project was started in August of 2014, unbeknownst to our team was the company SmartVent, which we learned about in January of 2015.

With current residential register vent covers a homeowner is limited to manually adjusting the louvers in a register cover. This wastes electricity because the homeowner has no control of the register cover when they are not at home. It is feasible to set up a remote controlled system that allows adjustment from another location, but this system still relies completely on the user to initiate the closing, opening of the register cover. The most effective solution to this problem would be an automated system that controls the louvers without any direct input from the user.

With the SmartVent system, this solution is realized. A user can set the desired temperature within a room and the SmartVent will control airflow to ensure that the temperature within the room remains constant. A web application allows the target temperature to be set anywhere internet is available to set conditions that are optimal for both comfort and HVAC efficiency. Thus excessive heating or cooling a household becomes a thing of the past.

I will update this soon, with schematics of our gear assembly, post the basic code we put on the Spark core, and more details about the design.