July 17, 2019 By: Abhishek Chaudhary
The main idea behind science and technology is to make lives simpler and easier. One might forget where the AC remote-control is or might want to control multiple ACs in a building from anywhere on the globe, luckily now we have a convenient solution to these problems which doesn’t require any changes to be done in the hardware of Air Conditioner.
To meet the needs of the modern lifestyle, IoT-based devices act as a one-stop solution for unifying your connected gadgets and controlling them from your internet-enabled devices. Here we developed an IoT-based solution that allows users to control multiple Air Conditioners remotely from anywhere in the world using his/her android phone, google assistant or Amazon Alexa device.
What Technical Knowledge Was Required for Making the Product?
- Android Development.
- NodeMCU ESP8266/Arduino microcontroller programming.
- Firebase
- Node.js
- Dialogflow
What Hardware Is Required to Get the Device Working?
For the main device, we use:-
- NodeMCU ESP8266
- IR led
- General-purpose transistor (3904)
- Jumper Wires
For the decoder, we use:-
- Arduino UNO
- IR Receiver (TSOP1738)
- Jumper wires
How to Make the Circuits?
The main controller device is used to control the Air Conditioner(s) using the IR signals sent through the IR LED. The IR LED emits specific IR codes fed in the device based on the user’s choice. The decoder device is required to decode the IR signals for the Air Conditioner Remote so that these decoded signals can be then fed to the main controller device for making it compatible with the specific Air Conditioner.
What Lies Under the Hood?
The user can control the AC remotely using a mobile application, Google Assistant, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, etc. The user device then sends the data packet to the server, which will then update the control parameters in the Realtime Database. Here we are using firebase’s real-time database. The NodeMCU will then retrieve these parameters from the database and will use the IR led to send signals to the Air Conditioner.
