This invention relates to the gathering of information from locations to be provided with conditioned air by one or more HVAC systems.
The gathering of information from locations in which conditioned air is to be provided has heretofore been largely accomplished through the use of thermostats. These thermostats typically allow an individual to enter a preferred set point temperature indicative of the level of comfort that he or she desires. The thermostat also typically includes a sensor for sensing the actual temperature in the room. The difference between the entered setpoints and sensed temperatures are used to control one or more HVAC systems providing conditioned air to the locations.
There may be several people in a location that would have different feelings as to what the set point temperature should be. Individual thermostats do not allow these people to each individually provide their respective feelings of comfort. There is also no ability to identify who is requesting a particular level of comfort at a particular location.
A data collection system allows individual occupants in one or more locations to provide an indication as to their respective levels of comfort. The indications as to comfort level are preferably provided through personal computers in these locations. Each computer is programmed to display a menu of comfort level options that may be selected by the user of the computer. Each computer is operative to also request that the user enter an identification. In the event that the entered identification is recognized, the computer will store the selection as to comfort level and timely provide the stored results to a network computer. The network computer is operative to analyze the comfort level information from these computers and send one or more commands to the HVAC system providing conditioned air to the locations.
In an exemplary preferred embodiment, individuals may select one of three different levels of comfort at their respective computers. The computers are grouped in accordance with the control of conditioned air to a particular location. Information from each of the computers is gathered and analyzed by a network computer which produces preferred levels of comfort for each location. This information as to preferred levels of comfort for each location is sent to an HVAC system control with damper controls that govern the flow of conditioned air to the various locations. The disclosed exemplary embodiment deals with levels of comfort for temperature in a location. The invention is, however, equally applicable to other measurements of comfort that may be analyzed and thereafter acted upon, including for instance, humidity or air flow.
Further advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Referring to
Each office area location is seen to include a number of individual personal computers such as computer 16 located in an office 18. Each office within office area location 12 is identified by an office index “K” where K=for instance 1 for office 18 and is for instance another value for office 20.
Each computer within an office in a particular office area location is preferably connected to a network computer 22. As will be explained in detail hereinafter, the network computer 22 is operative to collect comfort level information entered in each of the computers within the individual offices of each office area location. The collected information is analyzed by particular office area index value. The network computer is thereafter operative to generate overall indications as to level of comfort in each office area. These overall indications as to comfort level are preferably indexed in accordance with the office area index and provided to an HVAC system control 24. The HVAC system control 24 is operative to control the HVAC system 10 so as to provide appropriate amounts of conditioned air to each of the office areas in accordance with the information received from the network computer 22.
Referring now to
Referring now to
Referring now to
Referring again to step 48, in the event that “T_CLUSTER_AVG” is not greater than “T_AVG_HI_LIMIT”, then the processor will proceed along a no path to a step 52. Referring to step 52, the processor will inquire as to whether “T_CLUSTER_AVG” is less than the value of “T_AVG_LOW_LIMIT”. It is to be appreciated that the value of “T_AVG_LOW_LIMIT” will be set for all office areas in the office building or for the particular office area then under review. This value will again be set so as to require that the net sum of “T_INPUTS” is predominantly negative so as to indicate a predominance of “TOO COLD” having been selected from the menu 30 on each screen of an office computer within the office area indicated by the index “N”. For instance, this variable may be set equal to −3, −4, or even −5 for an office area including ten separate office computers. In the event that “T_CLUSTER_AVG” is less than the value of “T_AVG_LO_LIMIT”, then the processor will proceed from step 52 to a step 54 and set “CLUSTER_N_AVG” equal to −1. This will be an overall indication that the office area having an office area index equal to the current value of N is too cold.
Referring again to step 52, in the event that “T_CLUSTER_AVG” is not less than “T_AVG_LO_LIMIT”, then the processor will proceed to step 56 and set “CLUSTER_N_AVG” equal to 0, wherein the value of “N” will be the particular value of the office area index. This will be an overall indication that the temperature level is “JUST RIGHT” for the particular office area.
The processor proceeds from either step 50, step 54, or step 56 to a step 58 and inquires as to whether the office area index “N” is equal to “MAX_CLUSTER_INDEX”. The value of “MAX_CLUSTER_INDEX” will be equal to the highest value of the office area index identifying the last office area to be analyzed. In the event that the value of the office area index “N” is not equal to “MAX_CLUSTER_INDEX”, then the processor will proceed to a step 60 and increment the office area index “N” by one before returning to step 44. It is to be understood that the processor within the network computer will again execute steps 44–58 so as to determine the overall indication of comfort for the office area indicated by the new value of office area index “N”. This will be stored in the new “CLUSTER_N_AVG”. The value of the office area index “N” in the variable “CLUSTER_N_AVG” will identify the particular office area to which the overall comfort level indication applies.
Referring again to step 58, it will be understood that at some point, all office areas will have been analyzed and all overall comfort level indications will have been defined in respective values of “CLUSTER_N_AVG”. When this occurs, the processor will proceed to a step 62 and send all CLUSTER_N_AVGs for N=0 to N=MAX_CLUSTER to the HVAC system control 24. The processor will proceed to step 64 and inquire as to whether the value of “TIMER_CLOCK” equals “MAX_TIME”. The value of “MAX_TIME” will be arbitrarily set for the particular office building or office area under examination. In either case, the “TIMER_CLOCK” must exceed the “MAX_TIME” in order for the processor to proceed back to step 42 and again begin to collect the comfort level selections that have been made and stored as “T_INPUT_K” for each office computer in the first office area having an office area index value of 1. The menu sections from all such office computers will again be analyzed and an overall comfort level indication for each particular office area will be defined in CLUSTER_N_AVG before proceeding to the next office area. When all such office areas have been analyzed, the overall comfort level indications for each office area will be forwarded to the HVAC control 24 again in step 62.
Referring now to
Referring to step 78, it will be assumed that the HVAC system 10 of
Referring to step 84, it is to be appreciated that this step will be encountered after execution of either step 78, step 82 or step 80. Referring to step 80 the processor proceeds along the no-path out of step 80 when the overall comfort level indication for temperature for the particular office area is neither equal to 1 or −1. The overall comfort level indication for temperature will in this case be 0 indicating that the overall comfort level is just right. The processor will, in step 80, inquire as to whether the value of the office area index “N” equals the value of “MAX_CLUSTER_INDEX”. It will be remembered that the value of “MAX_CLUSTER_INDEX” is equal to the highest value of the office area index. This would identify the last office area having an overall comfort level value to be processed. In the event that the processor has not processed the last overall comfort level value for the last office area, the processor will proceed along the no-path and increment the office area index “N” by one in a step 86. The processor will proceed back to step 74 and read the “CLUSTER_N_AVG” for the office area having the newly defined office area index value. The overall comfort level value for temperature for this particular office area will be analyzed and the damper position variables will be appropriately incremented or decremented as has been previously described. At some point the overall comfort level indications for all office area will have been processed again. At this point, the processor will proceed out of step 84 along the yes path back to step 70. The processor will again await receipt of a new set of overall comfort level indications for the office areas before proceeding to analyze each such overall comfort level indication and again, set the damper positions in steps 72 through 86.
Referring now to
It is to be appreciated from the above that a number of programs resident in processors within an office computer, a network computer, and an HVAC system control have been disclosed. Alterations, modifications and improvements to these various individual programs may readily occur to those skilled in the art. For instance, the particular comfort control menu may vary as to how it is displayed as well as how many particular comfort level selections may be made. Furthermore, the processor program executed by the network computer could compute the overall comfort level indications for each particular office area in a different manner. This could include summing all comfort level values provided by the office computers and dividing by the number of computers in the particular office area. This could thereafter be compared with an appropriate high and low limit for such a computed average before setting the particular overall comfort level indication for that particular office area. The network computer program could furthermore require several distinct samplings of the comfort levels from each office computer with resulting computations as to overall comfort level indications before arriving at a particular overall comfort level indication average that is to be used for that particular area. It is to be furthermore understood that the particular program implemented by an HVAC system control downstream of the network computer could vary considerably depending on the HVAC system that is to be controlled and the particular overall comfort level indication that is to be responded to. In this regard, an alternative to temperature comfort could be the humidity in each office area. Accordingly, the foregoing description of the particular programs in the preferred embodiment is by way of example only and the invention is to be limited by the following claims and equivalents thereto.
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20030217143 A1 | Nov 2003 | US |