111 results about "Hvac control" patented technology

Embodiments of the invention comprise systems and methods for using the geographic location of networked consumer electronics devices as indications of occupancy of a structure for purposes of automatically adjusting the temperature setpoint on a thermostatic HVAC control. At least one thermostat is located inside a structure and is used to control an HVAC system in the structure. At least one mobile electronic device is used to indicate the state of occupancy of the structure. The state of occupancy is used to alter the setpoint on the thermostatic HVAC control to reduce unneeded conditioning of unoccupied spaces.

Systems for connecting PSTN lines to telephones, handsets, computers, telecopy machines and other end user interfaces or consumer electronics devices in a residence or business. Systems according to the present invention include Network Control Units which form the center of a star topology and which communicate via RF link with Wireless Access Units and handsets. Wireless Access Units feature an interface, such as, for example, a standard telephone jack, for accommodating a telephone, a fax machine, a compute modem or other device. Computers or other devices may also be accommodated by Wireless Access Units having other physical and virtual interfaces, including, for instance, serial ports or network interfaces. The Wireless Access Units may also be digital to accommodate ISDN for any other digital standard. Wireless control/monitoring accessories may also be employed to communicate with the Network Control Unit and provide additional functionality such as entrance monitoring, baby monitoring, HVAC control and other services. Such systems may monitor various bands of interest, process, store and change their operation according to information associated with signals or noise in such bands, and, if desired, report such information upstream to management nodes for various purposes.

Systems for connecting telecommunications infrastructure lines to telephones, handsets, computers, telecopy machines and other end user interfaces or consumer electronics devices in a residence or business. Systems according to the present invention include Network Control Units which form the center of a star topology and which communicate via RF link with Wireless Access Units and handsets. Wireless Access Units feature an interface, such as, for example, a standard telephone jack, for accommodating a telephone, a fax machine, a compute modem or other device. Computers or other devices may also be accommodated by Wireless Access Units having other physical and virtual interfaces, including, for instance, serial ports or network interfaces. The Wireless Access Units may also be digital to accommodate ISDN or any other digital standard. Wireless control/monitoring accessories may also be employed to communicate with the Network Control Unit and provide additional functionality such as entrance monitoring, baby monitoring, HVAC control and other services.

A system and method allows occupants in various locations to provide indications as to their respective levels of comfort. The indications as to comfort level are provided to a network computer. The network computer is operative to compute overall levels of comfort for each location by using a weighting factor for that location in combination with the indications as to levels of comfort These overall levels of comfort are sent to an HVAC control for further analysis prior to controlling the HVAC system that is to provide conditioned air to the locations. The resulting control of the HVAC system is influenced by the over weighting or under weighting factors used in computing the comfort levels for the locations.

A system, method and apparatus for controlling power consumption of an HVAC device configured to adjust a climate of a room in a fully automated manner in real time or near real time. For example, an apparatus according to various embodiments comprises a receiver, for receiving via a radiofrequency (RF) channel a control signal associated with a demand response event; a comfort determining mechanism, for determining whether air within the room exhibits a temperature level within a temperature range, a relative humidity level within a relative humidity range and whether the room is occupied or not; and a control mechanism, for generating a HVAC control signal configured to reduce power consumption of the HVAC device in response to receiving the demand response event control signal and the room air temperature level being within the temperature range and the relative humidity level being within the relative humidity range.

Disclosed herein is a heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) unit and controller with memory provisions for storing, receiving, and transmitting customer equipment profiles. The controller may include a plurality of profiles that allows a selection thereof for restoration. A method for configuring HVAC equipment, including a customer profile database and efficiently transmitting unique customer and factory profiles, is also disclosed.

Methods of controlling air conditioning and HVAC units using a thermostat for a discrete-speed unit that include changing speed based on how long the unit operates at a particular speed. Speed may be increased if a unit operates for longer than a predetermined time at a particular speed, and speed may be reduced if the unit operated for less than a specific amount of time during the prior run. In different embodiments, single-stage thermostats may control units that operate at three speeds, and two-stage thermostats may control units that operate at three to five or more speeds. In addition, in some embodiments, outdoor coil temperature may be measured and considered in determining speed. Further, in some embodiments, maintaining continuous or repeated operation at a boost speed may be avoided. Energy savings and noise reduction may result.

An actuator for an HVAC system comprises a stored model definition defining an HVAC control application, and an element library including a variety of stored model elements and controller modules (D, E) having instructions for controlling a processor of the actuator. The controller modules (D, E) include model elements and are configured to control the sequential order of their execution. The controller modules (D, E) are further configured to propagate any external data input (S66′, S68′) to their model elements prior to executing their first model element, and to propagate any data output (S63, S65, S67, S69) to external components after executing their last model element. The controller modules (D, E) are instantiated in different threads of execution, so that data is interchanged asynchronously between instantiated controller modules (D, E) and neither temporal dependencies nor change of value links are imposed on components of the control application.

An HVAC controller with a simplified and/or lower cost user interface. In one illustrative embodiment, the HVAC controller includes two switches, a movable member, and a plurality of detents. The detents are configured to cause the two switches to be switched in a sequence when the movable member is moved. In some cases, a controller is coupled to the two switches, and may change an HVAC control parameter based on the switch sequence.

A heating control method is provided for a multi-stage heating system including a heating circuit having a compressor, a condenser and an evaporator. An auxiliary heater is provided that is selectively controlled independently of the heating circuit. During a heating cycle in which the ambient outside temperature is greater than the balance point temperature associated with the operation of the heating circuit, the auxiliary heating circuit is normally prevented from operating. However, if the heating requirements are not satisfied after a predetermined time or the compressor is non-functional or operating improperly, the auxiliary heater is enabled.

A device and method for diagnosing shorts and fault conditions in electrical circuits such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) control circuits. The device includes a positive temperature coefficient (PTC) member to protect the electrical circuit from overcurrent conditions during diagnosis. The device also includes a light emitting diode (LED) and resistor electrically connected in parallel across the PTC member. An overcurrent condition causes the resistance of the PTC member to rise dramatically, creating a potential difference across the PTC member and lighting the LED. The invention also includes a method for locating a short in an HVAC control circuit using the short locating device.

A method to selectively present a list of parameter options on a front end device can be used to configure a target device. It comprises the steps of, selecting a target device to be configured, displaying a list of configurable parameters, selecting a parameter to configure, querying the target device for a set of valid parameter options, returning a set of valid parameter options from the target device to the front end device based on the current state of the target device, and displaying the list of valid parameter options on the front end device. An HVAC system capable of performing the method, selectively presents a list of parameter options used to configure an HVAC system component. The front end device presents a list of valid parameter options to a user based on the current state of the target device.

A heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system has a steerable outlet for directing a stream of treated air into a passenger compartment of a vehicle. A thermographic imager is configured to capture thermographic images covering a fixed region within the passenger compartment in which an occupant is potentially located. The HVAC control circuit is configured to a) compress a thermographic image to a temperature map representing pixels of the thermographic image falling within a predetermined temperature range corresponding to the occupant, b) filter the temperature map according to a sliding window to coalesce continuous regions of pixels on average falling within the predetermined temperature range, c) quantify an area for each continuous region, d) locate a centroid of a continuous region having a largest area, and e) aim the steerable outlet toward the centroid.

The invention discloses a commercial building HVAC control method based on multi-agent deep reinforcement learning. The method comprises the following steps: (1) on the premise of maintaining indoor temperature and air quality in a comfortable range, modeling a multi-region commercial building HVAC energy cost minimization problem into a Markov game, and designing a corresponding environment state, behavior and award function; (2) training a deep neural network by using a multi-agent actor-attention-reviewer reinforcement learning algorithm; and (3) in practical application, obtaining decisions about the position of an HVAC air valve and the air supply rate of each region according to the trained deep neural network and new environment state input. Compared with an existing method, the method provided by the invention does not need to know any priori information of a building thermodynamic model and uncertainty parameters, and has greater energy cost saving potential and higher expandability.

For controlling the flow of air into the zones (Z1, Z2, Z3, Zi) of a variable air volume HVAC system (1) having actuator driven dampers (D1, D2, D3, Di), which operate in a range from a minimum damper position to a maximum damper position for adjusting the flow of air into a zone (Z1, Z2, Z3, Zi), flow measurement values and current damper positions are transmitted via a telecommunications network (2) to a cloud-based HVAC control center (3). Using the flow measurement values and calibration values, which indicate HVAC system parameters at a defined calibration pressure in the HVAC system (1) and at different damper positions, the cloud-based HVAC control center (3) calculates the minimum damper position for the actuators (A1, A2, A3, Ai), such that the pressure in the HVAC system (1) does not exceed a defined maximum pressure threshold, and transmits the minimum damper position to the actuators.