My room, being surrounded almost entirely by outside walls gets very hot in the summer. While I have an A/C unit to help keep it cool, it is very wasteful to keep it running all day and night. Rather, I just need it to run while I'm actually in the room. To accomplish this, Caleb and I decided we could make a switch on the A/C unit turn it on or off depending on if I was in the room or not. Using a PIR motion sensor, we were able flip the servo (and therefore flip the unit) on when I enter the room, and then turn it off automatically after a specified time interval that is in the code. Variables such as this one can be changed to the users liking.
Video of the working project
ThinkSpeak Graph
We used Thinkspeak in order to graph our PIR Sensor readings. This graph shows every time someone walked past the sensor. Also, these recordings let the user how often the AC unit is being turned on. As you can see, during the testing of the system we walked past the sensor a lot to make sure everything was working properly. After some small adjustments, we locked in on a good mounting location for the sensor to improve accuracy as well as prevent accidentally setting it off. Imp
Even with our limited coding skills we managed to make fine adjustments to our motor switch to work with the motion detector. Implementing this technology makes a convenient device that will in the end, save utility costs. The time to imitate this project will be shorter for someone who has more coding experience. All in all we learned how to apply basic code and concepts into a technological project all while seeing the usefulness of IOT.
This is a simple setup which just includes connecting the power and ground wires to their respective locations on the photon and then putting the signal wire in a location that matches with the code
PIR Sensor Diagram
Same as the servo wiring, power and ground are connected as well as a signal wire.
In order to make the servo turn the correct amount to turn on/off the A/C unit, we had to 'guess and check' values until the desired angles were achieved.
// This #include statement was automatically added by the Particle IDE.#include<ThingSpeak.h>intPIRSensor=D0;intstate=0;intMotion=0;TCPClientclient;unsignedintmyChannelNumber=256907;// replace with your ChannelIDconstchar*myWriteAPIKey="IXPUI1EJ4696AFTO";// replace with your WriteAPIKeyvoidsetup(){ThingSpeak.begin(client);pinMode(PIRSensor,INPUT);}voidloop(){if(digitalRead(PIRSensor)==HIGH){Particle.publish("motion","Movement");state=!state;Motion=Motion+1;delay(5000);unsignedlongnow=millis();ThingSpeak.setField(1,Motion);ThingSpeak.writeFields(myChannelNumber,myWriteAPIKey);delay(10);}}
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