Summary

Regulating Apartment Building Heating System using Raspberry Pi

Argo Ellisson

The goal of this thesis to analyze different hard- and software and to build easy to use and cheap system for controlling different hardware devices in apartment building was completed;

• 1-wire technology was chosen for temperature data collecting as its sensors are simple and cheap. For controlling different hardware, electromechanical relays were chosen as they can be used to switch on and off virtually all devices in typical apartment building;
• For data storage MySQL database was chosen mainly because of it is widely spread;
• For system installation, backing up and restore backup media with configuration scripts was created first. This was not easiest solution for backup/restore but it provides possibility to install new systems very fast and requires very little storage space;
• Scripts were made for temperature data collection from four different sensors three times every minute and for data aggregation in every 5 minutes, one hour, one day and one month. Number of sensors is not limited and if needed multiple sensors can be used to measure same temperature;
• Scripts were made to regulate apartment building heating system. Part of the scripts just analyze data and other scripts switch hardware based on the analyze results. This provides good opportunity to switch scripts off partially or even fully to simplify debugging and regulate manually if needed;
• Nginx web-server was installed along with simple web-page which gives overview of the system;

Additionally to the main goals outdoor lights on-off switching according to the sunrise/sunset was also fulfilled.

Plans for future development are following:

• Add at least one more relay-controller to the system and add support for multiple relay-controllers to the scripts;
• Control and log entry using near field communication;
• Measure counters in real-time which provides more detail view to heating needs and therefore its also possible to regulate heatpump with better accuracy.
• Calculate relative outdoor temperatures and based on these temperatures develop delayed heating system switching on which takes into account apartment building heating capacity and inertia.

There is also possibility to develop advanced web-based user interface from current one which gives only overview.

Most negative side of this thesis is according to the opinion of the author the issue that the benefits and savings provided by the more precise regulating are individual for every apartment building and can’t be predicted. It may happen also that because of the better regulating indoor temperature will be more stable and heating consumption therefore bigger. More precise regulating does not replace renovation but will help to minimize wasting.

Most positive sides are the fact that this thesis contains exhaustive information about different topics like heating regulation, different hardware, devices and their control, using the shell-scripts, Linux operating system configuration and much more. Produced system is not definitely easy for novice users of Linux operating system but it is definitely motivating them with savings provided by more precise heating system regulating and with overview what is really going on in heating system provided by collected data.