Remote Holder Design for Controlling the Air Conditioner System

S. Suherman

, Royto Sihombing

, Riswan Dinzi

, and Rahmad Fauzi

Universitas Sumatera Utara, Electrical Engineering Department, Medan, Indonesia

Keywords: Air Conditioner Control, Remote Holder, Infrared Sensor

Abstract: Energy usage raterisesas population and economic increase. The unrenewable energy sources decrease and

the price increases. Even alternative energy sources are suggested, the product is limited. One of ways to

avoid energy insufficiency is to minimize home appliances energy consumptions. Some suggestions have

been proposed but ideas should becontinuously explored as human life depends on energy availability.

Despite air conditioning automatic control system to minimize energy consumption exists, this

articledesigned a remote holder to place any remote on it so that the device controls and drives remote based

on human existence in the room. The designed device is tested during working time and the results proof

that the designed device decreasesaboutone third of energy usage.

1 INTRODUCTION

The survey show that the energy demand of daily

human life grows significantly each year (Fitriana et

al., 2017), where cooling and lighting devices

consume the most. This fact becomes more obvious

in tropical country where the humidity and

temperature are quite high, while room temperature

requires air conditioner to decrease it. The

Indonesian standard mentioned that comfortable

temperature is about 22°C to 26°C (Nasional, 2001).

Such temperature is lower that the outdoor

temperature in most tropical country, so that the air

conditioner is employed to adjust it.

The energy consumption this cooling device may

increase if suggested maintenance is ignored. Poor

interior plan also contributes to energy waste.

Human behaviour often makes it worse.

Human awareness is very important on applying

energy reduction policy. However, discipline is

often to be a challenge that hardly overcome.

Therefore, human cannot be counted on. The

automatic control system is the expected solution.

Passive infrared sensor is the stunning invention that

is able to detect human presence. Many solutions

(Bakhtiar, B., & Suherman, 2015; Harikrishnan, R.,

& Sivagami, 2017) employ this sensor to control

energy usage. Some air conditioner systems have

been equipped by this technology, that is able to

detect and optimize how many people within the

controlled room so that suitable temperature can be

offered accordingly (Ahamed et al., 2016).

However, most the installed cooling systems are

not prepared for this technology, mainly for cost

effective reason. Additional controller may be

useful. Existing works such as Zeebaree (2014),

offered a device to automatically control the

temperature.The remote control design is also the

object of some proposed solutions (Aketa, Y., &

Yokoyama, no date; Kawai et.al, 2015). Likewise,

PIR was proposed by other researchers to manage

energy reduction (Harikrishnan, R., & Sivagami,

2017).

This article reports the PIR based remote holder

to be used for any kind of remote so that no much

changes on system is required. The proposed remote

holder may be mounted on the wall where remote is

easily accessed and human presence is covered.

2 DESIGN AND EVALUATION

2.1 Electronic Design

In order to implement the remote holder, the

following electronic components are collected and

employed. A transformer along with diodes and an

integrated circuit regulator are employed to change

thepower outlet to feeding voltage of 12 VDC. A

small solenoid is employed to mechanically push the

remote button.

184

Suherman, ., Sihombing, R., Dinzi, R. and Fauzi, R.

Remote Holder Design for Controlling the Air Conditioner System.

DOI: 10.5220/0010074501840187

In Proceedings of the International Conference of Science, Technology, Engineering, Environmental and Ramiﬁcation Researches (ICOSTEERR 2018) - Research in Industry 4.0, pages

184-187

ISBN: 978-989-758-449-7

Figure1.The designed electronic circuits

In order to do that, A PIR sensor is employed to

detect human. All circuit is controlled by an

integrated microcontroller module: Arduino. All

circuit is arranged as depicted in Figure 1.

2.2 Programming Plan

The programmed software is through Arduino

scratch. The initial OFF state represents that AC is

off. PIR sensor is periodically evaluated so that

human presence can be detected. When human

enters the room, microcontroller order solenoid arm

to push the remote ON button so that AC works. The

opposite condition also employs PIR and arduino.

2.3 Mechanical Design

The mechanical design is drawn as in Figure 2. This

initial plan show that mechanical relay takes the

large portion of the mechanical design. However,

size reduction is possible by using micro switch.

Figure 2. Mechanical design

2.4 System Evaluation

In order to evaluate the impact of the designed

device to reduce the AC energy consumption, the

following assessment is applied. The human

detection capability is mapped as in Figure 3 and

Figure 4.

Figure 3. Human Existence Test

Figure 4. Detection Area

The energy reduction assessment is assessed by

plotting the same scenario for an automatic AC,

ordinary AC and ordinary AC with the designed

device. The observation time is planned to be similar

for each experiment.

Remote Holder Design for Controlling the Air Conditioner System

185

3 EVALUATION RESULTS

The human presence test is fully successful as all

positions give positive detection (Table 1).The

circuit tests on the other handproduce varied

outcomes. The hardware calibration is performed

about 1000 milliseconds before the human detection

performed. The scenario is plotted twice for 50 times

human detection tests with average detection failure

rate of 6%.

Table 1. Human Presence Tests

Spot

location

Outcomes

Spot

location

Outcomes

A1 LOW D1 HIGH

A2 LOW D2 HIGH

A3 HIGH D3 HIGH

A4 HIGH D4 HIGH

A5 HIGH D5 HIGH

A6 LOW D6 HIGH

A7 LOW D7 HIGH

B1 LOW E1 LOW

B2 HIGH E2 LOW

B3 HIGH E3 HIGH

B4 HIGH E4 HIGH

B5 HIGH E5 HIGH

B6 HIGH E6 LOW

B7 LOW E7 LOW

C1 HIGH F1 LOW

C2 HIGH F2 LOW

C3 HIGH F3 LOW

C4 HIGH F4 LOW

C5 HIGH F5 LOW

C6 HIGH F6 LOW

C7 HIGH F7 LOW

Figure 5. Energy usage pattern

Location spots with distances higher than 5m is

not detected as in F and G spots, A7, A2, A6 and

A1. The consumption test shows increasing total

energy consumption over time as depicted in Figure

5. When compared to a conventional AC with and

without the designed device, the average energy

consumption decreases almost 20%. The average

temperature is more than 3% lower (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Room temperature comparison

The next evaluation is to compare the

conventional AC equipped by the designed device

and the automatic AC. The results are plotted in

Figure 7. The average temperature of the

conventional AC equipped by the proposed device

ismore than 5% colder than the automatic AC.

Figure 7. Automatic AC comparison

Meanwhile, the amount of the consumed energy

for each experiment is recorded in Table 2, where

clearly described that the device is able to decrease

energy consumption 21% lower than the automatic

one and about 32% to standard air conditioner

system.

Table 2. Energy consumption records

System Energy in kWH

ConventionalAC 6.8483

Automatic AC 5.4106

ConventionalAC plus device 4.6365

ICOSTEERR 2018 - International Conference of Science, Technology, Engineering, Environmental and Ramiﬁcation Researches

186

4 CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, this paper has proposed the smart

remote holder and the experiment has revealed that

the device is successfully decreasing energy usage

on air conditioning system. The standard AC

equipped with the proposed device is reduced about

32%, and 21% lower than the automatic system.

Furthermore, the device is successful in maintaining

lower room temperature. There has been failure

detection if distance of human presence is longer

than 5 m, therefore, multiple sensors may be applied

in future work.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This research is funded by the DRPM DIKTI under

schema of PenelitianTerapanUnggulanPerguruan

Tinggi 2018 and supported by Lembaga Penelitian,

Universitas Sumatera Utara.

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