Remote control of a household heating system using wireless technologies.

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The TVK servis, s.r.o., a Czech company, designed and built a heating system project using an UniPi controller along with wireless technologies and remote control.

One of the most frequent uses of UniPi programmable logic controllers (PLC) is the control of intelligent HVAC systems. The TVK servis, s.r.o. company also specializes in this particular field; the company already presented one of its projects, an economic heat pump system controlled by UniPi Neuron S103 controller, on the UniPi website.

One of the recent company projects was focused on integrating a heat pump with remote control into an already existing heating system. The project also included the addition of wireless temperature sensors and thermoelectric valve drives while retaining the GSM gate with an external relay, allowing the user to switch the heating by a cellphone.

The system is built around the UniPi Neuron M503 controller, featuring a combination of digital I/Os and relay outputs as well as 10 analogue I/Os and a pair of RS485 serial lines. A heat pump is connected to the controller along with circulator pumps for three heating circuits. For the pump control, the controller then uses data collected from thermostats and signals from the GSM gate external relay. New features consist of temperature sensors and thermoelectric valve drives using the EnOcean wireless protocol; these devices communicate with the controller through an EnOcean/Modbus gateway. The Mervis RT control software is used on the controller.

The system can be controlled both locally and remotely. Local control is implemented by a Weintek touchscreen panel connected to the controller through the RS485 serial line, while the remote control utilizes an HMI interface accessible through a public web address. Both control interfaces were designed for the maximum simplicity and similarity between each other to allow an easy control of the whole system.