Aim: Measure heat distribution in a room using temperature measurement at different locations.
Objectives:
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Build temperature measurement circuit with multiple inputs from number of thermistors.
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Deploy the measurements in one room with sensors located in different places across the room.
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Analyse the data for possible improvements.
Project plan:
In this project, I will be building a circuit based on Arduino platform to measure the temperature at different locations in a room. Arduino will serve as a server and a laptop will be used to poll the temperature data and record. The data will be analysed using open-source data visualisation (such as python with matplotlib) program. This analysis will allow me to inform the habits and make some modifications to efficient use of heating energy available from central heating. I had anticipated cold days at the time of putting this project together. However, it has turned out to be hottest summer so far where I live so I will be making some changes to the originally proposed project. In any case, it will be interesting to see the temporal differences, lags and dynamics in general of heat distribution in a room.
I have received the kit with interesting range of NTC thermistors so I am excited to use them to measure temperature in different places in my room!
In this picture, you can see that the heater is placed next to the window (which is common practice). The curtains are usually long to cover the window fully but unfortunately, it covers the heater, too. This to me seems like the heat will rise on the window side rather than on the room side when curtains are drawn at night. I wonder how much heating we are loosing because of this type of design. As I hinted, this is how most UK houses are.
I will be making a series of experiments of heating the room with various different situations like, curtains drawn, not drawn, drawn but heater exposed towards the room rather than window, etc. I look forward to the measurements I will be making with Molex NTC thermistors! Stay tuned...! 