Smart A/C
The first month of classes is the same every year: temperatures in the upper 80's and high humidity. Air conditioned rooms are hard to come by in some residence halls, and unfortunately mine happens to be one of those.
Not wanting to put up with another South Bend summer, I decided to build a home-made air conditioner to cool my room down a couple degrees and dissipate some of the humidity. According to school rules, air conditioners are not allowed in dorms due to excess power requirements. Fans, however, are ok. Using a fan as my basis, I engineered myself a solution.
A box fan was the start of my project. To it I attached a coil of copper tubing, vinyl tubing, and an aquarium pump. The idea is to pump cold water through the tube and then blow air over the coil. My residence hall has a large ice maker in the basement, providing a coolant source.
The first generation A/C unit was a success, but not without its problems. The air was so humid that it would condense onto the coil and water would start spraying over the floor. In addition to this, an entire cooler of ice would melt in 30 minutes, making ice trips a much too common occurrence.
For the second generation I invested in a larger cooler, designed a drip pan, and built a system to monitor the water temperature and room temperature. Once the ice melts and the water temperature starts to rise a Particle Photon board triggers an SMS message and I will know when to change out the ice. Here is a picture of generation 2:
Testing has proven that the A/C unit will indeed cool off the room, but only by a few degrees. However, the dehumidifiing properties is a monumental benefit and makes the room seem much cooler.
As mentioned above, Internet of Things (IoT) technology allows me to track the temperature and humidity of the room. A small microcontroller posts small packets of data to a web service every 30 seconds. The data can be viewed and used to trigger events. The sidebar to the right shows the current temp. and humidity of my room. ----->
Generation 3 is still in the planning process and will be unveiled next year, once the temperatures start to rise again.
