Design and Implementation of Computing-based Air Conditioner (AC) (ComBAC) – A Preliminary Work

Computing-based air conditioner (ComBAC) highlights the concept of spot cooling that helps to reduce energy consumption without sacrificing consumer comfortability, while the conventional air conditioner (AC) cooling down the entire space regardless of occupancy. In this study, National Instruments (NI) myRIO has been explored as a hardware solution, and the advantage of graphical-based programming in LabVIEW has been fully used to design the graphical user interface (GUI) as well as for data acquisition programming. For the input, web camera C170 is used to detect the presence of human/object in a room, while the value of current is being measured using current sensor and later being analysed by NI myRIO to exhibit the energy consumed of an AC. NI myRIO also acts to control the AC, to divert the air flow according to the spot cooling concept and visualisation of energy consumed available via liquid crystal display (LCD). To evaluate the proposed system, ComBAC has been prototyped into a wallmounted AC unit with 2.5 meter height within a 3  3 square meter room floor area. An evaluation for objects/humans detection and dynamic tracking mechanism has been conducted and results obtained shown promising results. The proposed system has successfully captured the presence of object/human in a room, analyse the data and finally portray the value of energy consumption of the AC.

[1]  Yew Khoy Chuah,et al.  Non-Invasive ZigBee Wireless Controller for Air-Conditioner Energy Saving , 2011, 2011 7th International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing.

[2]  Ying Zhou,et al.  Energy Saving Control in Air Conditioning System Based on Flexible Iterative Learning Control , 2008, 2008 Second International Symposium on Intelligent Information Technology Application.

[3]  Pinit Kumhom,et al.  Adaptive actual load for energy saving in split type air conditioning , 2016, 2016 16th International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies (ISCIT).

[4]  Shengwei Wang,et al.  Dynamic simulation of building VAV air-conditioning system and evaluation of EMCS on-line control strategies , 1999 .

[5]  Fredolin Tangang,et al.  Climate change and variability over Malaysia: gaps in science and research information , 2012 .

[6]  Jiang Jing,et al.  Temperature control system of air-conditioning based on the fuzzy theory , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation.

[7]  Ryosuke Shibasaki,et al.  Real-Time Monitoring of People Flows and Indoor Temperature Distribution for Advanced Air-Conditioning Control , 2008, 2008 11th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[8]  U. Ramachandraiah,et al.  Adaptive automation and run time equalization with real time monitoring for split air conditioners in telecom applications for energy efficiency , 2015, 2015 International Conference on Robotics, Automation, Control and Embedded Systems (RACE).

[9]  Shengwei Wang,et al.  Integrating Building Management System and facilities management on the Internet , 2002 .

[10]  Jiang Wu,et al.  Scheduling of air conditioner based on real time price and real-time temperature , 2015, The 27th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (2015 CCDC).