Design Of An Intelligent Room Light Controller With Bidirectional Counters For Energy Efficiency Applications

ABSTRACT

Despite the installation of light energy waste control systems in modern buildings, many people end up paying for high energy bills. The cost of installation of these systems is usually high, and most of them are inefficient making it a major concern to the normal user. Due to technological advancement, sensors and microcontrollers are employed in a wide range of applications. This includes domestic and industrial fields where they aid in control of automated processes. In these applications, manual operation is greatly reduced hence making the systems more efficient. In order to control energy wastage, researchers have devised different technologies all geared towards minimization of energy waste. In this research a prototype of light control system has been designed, fabricated and tested for stability. It consists of TSOP1738 receiver, TIL38 infrared sensors, DH-G03 passive infrared motion sensor, PIC16F690 microcontroller interfacing board, system software and lighting loads operated by OM1H-5H-105D relay. Passive Infrared motion sensor (PIR) has been used for motion detection while the entire system is controlled by the PIC16F690 microcontroller. In order to avoid false triggering of the system, infrared transmitter and receiver together with the microcontroller have been used to count people entering and leaving the room. When a person enters the room and comes into the motion sensor coverage area, a register configured as a counter is incremented by one and the lights are switched ON automatically. When a person leaves the room, the counter is decremented by one and the status of the room occupancy is shown on a liquid crystal display. The room lights are switched OFF within 200 milliseconds when the motion sensor detects no obstacle in its field of view hence avoiding energy wastage. In addition, the designed system is programmable, automated, portable and cost effective.