A Remote Thermostat Control and Temperature Monitoring System of a Single-Family House using openHAB and MQTT

Abstract

In this research, an open-source IoT platform named openHAB smart home automation is used as a home server, an ESP32 Thing microcontroller board is used to design a remote-control system for a thermal energy storage system. It consists of temperature sensors for real-time temperature monitoring, ESP32 Thing board is used for data receiving, processing and sending it to the MQTT broker, openHAB software installed in the personal computer is used as a home server for creating dashboard panel, MQTT broker is used to establishing the communication in between openHAB home server and ESP32 Thing board, Wi-Fi router is used to create the communication channel, a battery-powered remote controlled heater with a digital thermostat is used as a testing device where user can set the desired temperature for house heating. The main objectives of this work are to design a low cost monitoring and control system for thermal energy storage systems, to monitor the real-time temperature data, to design a control system for thermostat settings with the following features such as manual/automatic operations, local/remote control options. The user can access the dashboards locally via any computer and remotely via openHAB Cloud console from anywhere in the world. The proposed system in this work will help residence to manage their heating systems smartly in a cost effective way, which will be the replacement of the conventional thermostat settings. The utility provider company can also use this system to control the thermostat settings from centrally, wirelessly, and remotely.