Indoor Sensor HVAC System

Renesas' indoor sensor units for automatic home or building HVAC systems provide local data on each room or section via Bluetooth mesh to the master actuator. This can be one, or all, of the following data:

• Indoor air quality (TVOC, eCO₂, and IAQ according to the German environment agency, or UBA)
• Temperature and relative humidity (degrees, percentage)
• Light (lux)
• Barometric pressure (mbar)
• Motion detection

In addition, a simple GUI can be implemented via capacitive touch or push button(s), and/or a low power LCD (i.e., eInk) to display local sensor values and enter data. A more sophisticated GUI may also be achieved via a master actuator, IP gateway or smartphone. A real-time clock (RTC) could easily be added to switch between different operation modes, depending on the day, time, or holiday. All RTCs could also be synchronized within the system.

Benefits

• The RX23W MCU enables Bluetooth 5 mesh communication
• the RE01 series energy harvesting controller can be used for power supply, combining the control of charging and discharging dedicated capacitors and/or rechargeable batteries of different sources with a powerful Arm® core MCU. These harvesters could be one of the following:
• Solar cell (i.e. using the natural or artificial room lighting)
• Thermal harvester (e.g., from a radiator or hot pipe)
• Vibration harvester (e.g., from machines/motors)
• RF harvester (i.e., taking away some of the near field energy from a nearby RF transmitter)