Build Instructions

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• 1

  Step 1

  Understand heat-pump

  In order to explain how heat-pump works I created interactive animation on my website here: http://yellowrobot.xyz/heat-pump-diag/index.html

  I also recommend watching my video on youtube about this yellowrobot.xyz project:

  The heat pump uses a physical process of convection to transfer heat using pressurization and de-pressurization. It works exactly like a fridge but its result is heat not cold.

  Basically, at winter time, normal operation of an air-source heat pump is following:

  1. Heating mode
     • Freon (R134a) is flowing through the system as shown in an image. Cold freon is being pressed into TXV valve at high pressure where it expands freon at low pressure and drops its temperature drastically. For example to -15°C.
     • Now freon Temperature is below ambient temperature. For example, ambient temperature is -10°C.
     • Then freon evaporate in evaporator/radiator. The fan helps to speed-up heat exchange.
     • During this process, freon absorb heat difference from outside and it heats up to for example -11°C.
     • The system has just gained 4°C in energy from ambient temperature.
     • Then freon is more in gaseous state than liquid state at low pressure and it is compressed using compressor to high pressure at 60°C
     • Then using heat-exchanger heat from freon is transferred to water circulation system
     • At normal operation Efficiency (COP = 3) might be much higher than simple oil/coil electrical heaters (COP = 1)
     • TXV valves automatically/mehanically adjust depending on outside temperature.
     • A great resource about TXV valves: http://www.emersonclimate.com/Documents/FlowContr...
  2. Ice build-up
     • At winter time when ambient temperature are close to 0°C or below often evaporator radiator gets icy because during convection process moisture from air will be attracted to radiator (similarly, like air-conditioner attracts moisture)
     • When this happens freon coming out of evaporator/radiator is more in a low-pressure liquid state than gaseous state and cause a compressor to work harder thus it will make much higher electricity bills and reduce a lifetime of the compressor.
     • Also as air flow is blocked by ice around the radiator, no heat is extracted from outside. Temperature of freon do not change much by passing through frozen evaporator.
     • Efficiency (COP <= 1) of heat-pump drops drastically.
  3. Defrost mode
     • When ice has been detected 3 way/4 way valve is reversed and flow in the system starts to go in other direction. It is extracting heat from inside home and bringing it to external evaporator/radiator to melt ice. During this mode, TXV valve is not important.
     • Usually, if ice-build up is detected in a timely fashion it should not take more than 2min to melt whole ice.
     • Ice build up can be detected using various sensors like:
       • Air-flow differential sensor
       • Optical sensors
       • Pressure differential sensors in freon pipes
       • Just using ambient temperature and simple timer
• 2

  Step 2

  Problem before

  My heat pump that was designed in China used ambient temperature and simple timer to initiate defrost cycle/mode. Unfortunately, they did not manufacture it for the north European climate. Here in Latvia, during winter when outside temperatures are around +5 °C till -5°C we have very moist air that causes huge ice buildup on evaporator/radiator. Interestingly that this heat pump worked much better at temperatures -15°C till -20°C when the air is dry and cold. During this time I had no problems with it and it produced very good efficiency results.

  I tried many things to diagnose problems and to hack it, but it was not possible to re-program microcontroller, so I had to devise a plan to replace it all together.

  Otherwise, I had to manually wire up defrost mode hack every time heat pump was totally frozen. It was at least 2 times a day + electricity bill was awful when outside temperature was +5 °C till -5°C

  
  
  
  

• 3

  Step 3

  Build your own "brain" transplant
  
  

  All source code and Fritzig scheme of circuit is available here on GitHub:

  https://github.com/evaldsurtans/heat-pump-arduino-...

  Robot "eye"

  In order to detect ice buildup, I used an idea from line follower robots that have IR sensor for detecting black line on the surface against a white background. As ice is more or less white when formed on evaporator/radiator I can use this sensor's analog value to discriminate when it should initiate defrost mode/cycle. IR line detecting sensor is just IR diode emitting IR light and other IR diode absorbing reflected light of surface. To secure it from water exposure I used layers of hot glue.

  Relays

  Luckily inside heat pump's cover, I found circuit diagram that helped me to understand the operation of the system. The heat pump actually uses chained realys where 220V 6A AC relays at controller board trigger next huge 220V 16A AC relay relay downstream. These huge relays then start the compressor, fan, internal heater, valve solenoids, etc. As these are quite powerful they create EMI (Electro-Magnetic Interference), so it is essential to separate them as much as possible from microcontroller circuit. In the end, I used a seperate power source for first layer of relays (220V 6A AC) and triggered them using NPN transistors and Optron/Opto-couplers or Opto-transistors. These then created optical connection between relays and microcontroller. Otherwise there are a lot of problems that might occur as I described them in next step of this instructable.

  Microcontroller

  As for microcontroller I used original Arduino Mega 2560. I also tried Chinese clone Arduino Mega 1280, but it caused chaos beyond imagination that I described in next step. Original Arduino Mega 2560 works very stable and robust.

  PCB

  As this is the only prototype I did not bother to produce custom made PCB, but instead, I used dotted soldering plate on which I created as many paths as possible. For other connections, I used jumper wires that are useful for quick testing of ideas and changes in design. If someone wants to replicate this I would advise to create custom PCB to avoid spaghetti of wires.

  Temperature sensors

  For measuring temperature I used pump's built-in temperature probes that are just dead simple thermo-resistors. I experimentally found its properties using linear regression, because there were no indications of its type. For more precise temperature measures I used also one wire sensors DS18B20 (coupled with 4.7K resistor).

  Components needed

  • Arduino Mega 2560
  • Adafruit Micro-SD breakout
  • Micro-SD card
  • Power supply at 5V 1-2A (for relays)
  • Power supply at 12V 1-2A (for microcontroller)
  • Multiple 5V DC - 220V 6A AC Relays + rectifier diodes (flywheel diodes)
  • Multiple NPN transistors + 1K ohm resistors
  • Multiple Optocouplers / optrons LTV817 (Uis=5kV 35V 50mA >50% DIP4) + 220ohm resistors
  • Multiple temperature sensors DS18B20 + 4.7K ohm resistor
  • Optional RTC - DS1307 Real Time Clock breakout board
  • Dotted PCB soldering plate

  Code

  Progam is the most important part of the project/brains. Main features of code are:

  • Adaptive temperature in heating system depending on outside temperature & water circulation system's temperatures
  • Interactive console mode using Serial library to query and set-up parameters, logging information, without reprogramming of chip
  • SD card offline memory for operation in between resets and logging of all events and sensor readings
  • Optional implementation of offline Real Time Clock module
  • Reading all safety sensors like high, low-pressure switches
  • Arduino internal voltage monitoring
  • Arduino PWM Timer interrupt to keep correct time for operation and logging purposes
  • Arduino watchdog interrupt to avoid crashing / hang-up of program

  For programming Arduino I would advise using Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition and Visual Micro plugin that is fantastic for coding and debugging http://www.visualmicro.com/ . If you are skeptical and used to Arduino IDE you should try Visual Studio C/C++ auto-completion features. Also JetBrains plugin for C/C++ auto-completion is wonderful https://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/tag/resharper-c/

  Useful code snippets from whole code on github:

  SD card breakout

  #include "SD.h"
  
  void setup() 
  {
  	if (!SD.begin()) 
  	{
  		Serial.println("SD failed!");
  
  	}
  	else
  	{
  		Serial.println("SD connected.");
  	}
  }
  
  void testSD()
  {
  	//if(SD.exists(fileNameHistory))
  	// SD.remove(fileNameHistory);
  
  	File myFile = SD.open(F("test2.txt"), FILE_WRITE); // if the file opened okay, write to it:
  			if (myFile) {
  				Serial.print(F("Writing to test2.txt..."));
  				myFile.println(get_full_datetime());
  				// close the file:
  				myFile.close();
  				Serial.println(F("done."));
  			}
  			else {
  				// if the file didn't open, print an error:
  				Serial.println(F("error opening test.txt"));
  			}
  
  		myFile = SD.open(F("test2.txt"));
  			if (myFile) {
  				Serial.println(F("test2.txt:"));
  				// read from the file until there's nothing else in it:
  				while (myFile.available()) {
  					Serial.write(myFile.read());
  
  					wdt_reset(); //tell watchdog that you are still alive (must call in every <8 sec)<br>
  				}
  				// close the file:
  				myFile.close();
  			}
  			else {
  				// if the file didn't open, print an error:
  				Serial.println(F("error opening test.txt"));
  			}
  }

  Watchdog timer

  #include "avr/wdt.h"
  
  wdt_enable(WDTO_8S); //restart arduino if there are no response in 8 sec
  
  wdt_reset(); //tell watchdog that you are still alive (must call in every <8 sec)
  
  void loop()
  {
  
  //do work
  
  wdt_reset();
  
  }

  Timer interrupts for keeping precise time in parallel of other code

  http://astro.neutral.org/arduino/arduino-pwm-pins-...

  #include "TimerThree.h"<br>
  Timer3.initialize(500000);         // initialize timer1, and set a 1/2 second period	
  Timer3.pwm(PIN_TIMER_3, 512);                // setup pwm on pin 9, 50% duty cycle
  Timer3.attachInterrupt(timer_callback);  // attaches callback() as a timer overflow interrupt

  Reading voltage level from internal reference
  

  long readVcc() {
  // Read 1.1V reference against AVcc   
  
  // set the reference to Vcc and the measurement to the internal 1.1V reference   
  
  #if defined(__AVR_ATmega32U4__) || defined(__AVR_ATmega1280__) || defined(__AVR_ATmega2560__)     ADMUX = _BV(REFS0) | _BV(MUX4) | _BV(MUX3) | _BV(MUX2) | _BV(MUX1);   
  
  #elif defined (__AVR_ATtiny24__) || defined(__AVR_ATtiny44__) || defined(__AVR_ATtiny84__)     ADMUX = _BV(MUX5) | _BV(MUX0);   
  
  #elif defined (__AVR_ATtiny25__) || defined(__AVR_ATtiny45__) || defined(__AVR_ATtiny85__)     ADMUX = _BV(MUX3) | _BV(MUX2);   
  
  #else     ADMUX = _BV(REFS0) | _BV(MUX3) | _BV(MUX2) | _BV(MUX1);   
  
  #endif  <br>delay(2); // Wait for Vref to settle   <br>ADCSRA |= _BV(ADSC); // Start conversion   <br>while (bit_is_set(ADCSRA,ADSC)); // measuring
  
  uint8_t low  = ADCL; // must read ADCL first - it then locks ADCH     uint8_t high = ADCH; // unlocks both<br>long result = (high<<8) | low;
  
  result = 1125300L / result; // Calculate Vcc (in mV); 1125300 = 1.1*1023*1000   <br>return result; // Vcc in millivolts 
  
  }

  In the end, I just had to replace controller panel and hook up all cables and start testing it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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