Abstract:
Conventional air conditioner systems do not rely on occupancy. Due to this, excessive power is being wasted and humans are being exposed to building-related syndromes’ (known as sick building syndrome) through air – condition. This paper proposed a new wearable control strategy for use in an office or a single room, such that the occupant will wear the device on the wrist, thus controlling the air conditioner by wireless communication instead of the manual control and thus enhancing the thermal comfort of occupants at all times. The developed control system ensures that air condition is not in operation at all the times as in the conventional control method but would be in operation only at the certain period of times to satisfy occupant’s thermal requirement thereby reducing waste of energy. The system response is evaluated using body temperature of different people with normal and above normal temperature. The result of the evaluation shows that the system mean response is 4.3 seconds to temperature below normal. Also, the system mean response to body temperatures above normal is 1.05 seconds faster than below normal.
Keywords: air conditioner; wireless communication; control; thermal comfort; microcontroller
