Environmental monitoring and control of a room
This project was initiated using an Arduino to regulate the server room's temperature. It employs two 1.5Kw fans to introduce external ambient air into the room whenever the temperature falls below the (MAX3) threshold. This process creates a positive pressure inside the room, expelling warmer air through specialized vents. The primary objective is to conserve energy on cooler days by leveraging the ambient air, reducing the reliance on air conditioning units when they're not necessary.
As of October 2023 this will developed into Python for deployment onto a more powerful Rasberry Pi
Started: October 2022
Reason: Before the cost of electricity started to rise
Author: Nic Kilby
Component List
Raspberry Pi 4 or better for the central controller
Enviro Indoor (Pico W Aboard) – Enviro Indoor + Accessory Kit x number of areas to monitor
Weatherproof Cover/Enclosure for Outdoor Sensors
Fan 1.5Kw x 2
TUNE-S-600x600-M1 Mechanical damper with M1 Actuator
Deploy Enviro Indoor
Backup up the original main.py first. Using a program such as Thonny copy main.py and sensor_readings.py from sensors folder on to the root partition. Edit main.py update values for
| Parameter | |
|---|---|
| ssid | your_network_name |
| password | your_password |
| location | label_for_identification |
Restart the Pico W and navigate to http://ipaddres/metrics
Deploy of Raspberry Pi4
For the controller we are going to use Ubuntu 22.04 Server. Follow the instructions at this tutorial. Install NTP
sudo apt install ntp
sudo vim /etc/ntp.conf
sudo systemctl restart ntp
We will use snaps to install the Prometheus server on the Raspberry Pi.
When installed with snap prometheus.yml will be located at
var/snap/prometheus/current
Copy prometheus.yml and update with correct targets
sudo snap restart prometheus.prometheus
snap services
Grafana will be installed locally with the normal node exporter dashboard plus a custom dashboard from the sensors.
By default Prometheus will be http://ipaddres:9090 By default Grafana will be By default Grafana will be http://ipaddres:3000
Deployment of Envirozen
Copy envirozen/envirozen/controller
pip install -r requirements.txt
Update config.py with values for Prometheus server and set Metric thresholds for the room.
Create envirozen.service in etc/systemd/system using file as a template.
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart envirozen
Web interface is http://envirozen.zengenti.io:5000
Envirozen.py does the following:
- Starts the Flask Web Server
- Evaluates Promethues metrics
- Reads a Status file to determine the operation mode
- Checks the conditions for actions
- Runs in a loop defined in config.py