Project
| # | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | Anti-freeze water pipe system |
Qinru Li Rui Lan Zichen Liang |
Eric Clark | design_document0.pdf final_paper0.pdf presentation0.pptx proposal0.pdf |
|
| Introduction: We noticed that in the winter when the temperature is below 0 degrees, the water pipe will become frozen. This will be a huge trouble if there are no people at home to deal with this trouble immediately. We are thinking to design a system which can monitor the temperature around the pipe. When the temperature is below the threshold, a heating system will start heating the system above a certain temperature to prevent the pipe from freezing. Meanwhile, the system will use a wifi module to inform the user about this issue. This system is designed to operate outside the water pipe, so no penetration or any modification needed for the existing water pipe. The target of the water pipe is universal. Components: Sensor We are going to use the temperature sensors for this system. We noticed that the temperature sensor today is accurate enough to detect changes in tenths unit. The temperature sensor will be installed on the outside of the water pipe because of the high thermal conductivity of most of the materials of water pipe (mostly steel, copper). The sensor should be insulated from our heating system by for example, take distance or insulating material between the two types of equipment. Nevertheless, we are open-minded to an alternative sensor system which can improve our sensing accuracy. For example, the acoustic sensor may be considered to detect the state of water in the pipe because the speed of sound varies in the different density of matters. Heating system We plan to build the heater using thermal resistor rather than buying a product from the market. The heater uses DC voltage as the power supply. To do so, we are going to design an AC-DC conversion circuit using AC power straight from the building. The heating system also consists of a 12V battery such that when blackout exists, the AC voltage breaks down and the battery starts to work as an alternative. Wifi module When the temperature is below a certain level, we will send an alarm signal through a wifi module to an online server so that user can be immediately aware of the dangerous situation of the pipe. Controller The main functions of the controller are: 1) Decide when to turn on and off the heating system. In this part, we will apply a feedback control for safety reasons. When the water is overheated, the controller will shut up the heating and waiting for the temperature coming down again. 2) Send the alarm to the wifi module. We understand keeping heating up the water pipe is not feasible for a long time. Thus, we believe the system should warn the house owner once the temperature is below than the threshold. 3) Decide whether AC or battery power supply should be used. Note that besides the power base supply, the system also has a backup battery in the case of emergency. Power System We need AC-DC transformer to convert high-voltage AC power into DC power that the system components can use. We also need to design a voltage regulator such that we can convert the DC power to different scales for the requirements of different components in our circuit. Besides, a MUX is required to select the power from power panel (AC) and battery. The select signal will be sent by the controller Web Board: https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=14561 https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=14777 |
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