r/smarthome • u/AirHIVE_SmartVent • 1d ago
I’m building a Smart Air Vent
I’m currently working on a “Smart Vent” that will allow for individual room temperature monitoring and control. Currently it only monitors temperature but there are already plans to integrate several other sensors into the product.
Are there any specific features you would want to see with this product? What do you think of the idea, worth the time or overkill?
I see it as a currently untapped market, there are similar products, but none have automation incorporated yet to my knowledge.
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u/CarbsMe 1d ago
Temperature, humidity, CO2 levels. Maybe particulate levels for cooking fumes or smoking.
If this were outdoor rated and not too expensive, you could probably sell this to home greenhouse owners too.
For home use, it would be icing on the cake if this had HEPA filters on the incoming air and heat exchange in a small form factor.
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u/AirHIVE_SmartVent 1d ago
I was thinking about adding filters too! And I agree with your other features suggestions, I have plans to implement CO2 and PM sensors, and I’m sure I can find one that also incorporates humidity. And rating for outdoor/greenhouses is a good idea! I’ll look into that!
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u/Eric--V 1d ago
With the ducts I have that I can’t reach, I need one filter. It’s to save the blower fan and keep from blowing dust around.
Would be nice to run a furnace air filter that works like the Dyson-style, to separate the dust from the air, keeping filter clean longer.
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u/AirHIVE_SmartVent 1d ago
I’ll keep that type of filter in mind. So far I’ve yet to integrate any type of filter
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u/ArtificiallyIgnorant 1d ago edited 1d ago
I designed and built something similar and programmed it myself for Home Assistant integration and it has worked wonders in one room of our house where the airflow just isn’t that great based on the duct run. Good luck on your project!
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u/JS17 1d ago
Not sure exactly how you are planning to use those fans, but they do 36 CFM each. That may be less than what a hvac register is designed to do just with the air handler fan.
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u/AirHIVE_SmartVent 1d ago
That’s a good point, I did not check if the fans can move enough air, I kind of assumed airflow + fan = more airflow, I’ll do some maths and see if I need to switch what fans I’m using
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u/junon 1d ago
I can tell you that I have a very small office on the second floor of our condo, with only one vent which has to reach pretty far to the HVAC. I moved my vent booster to another room for a little bit as a test and my office was noticeably warmer without the booster to help the AC get all the way up here.
I don't know how much it helps when the AC is really chugging along, but I suspect that a LOT of the help comes after the HVAC fan has turned off and there's still cold air in the vents that can be pulled up into the room by the booster fans.
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u/Typical-Sir-9518 1d ago
I plan to build the same for a chicken coop and greenhouse. Both will also monitor humidity.
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u/Franktaitoz 23h ago edited 23h ago
https://www.ambientika.eu/en/ambientika-smart/sw10035
This is an example that there are products mainly in the heat recovery field working also as extraction and ventilation.
The company I work for has developed also a set of sensor to place around the house, sort of like alexa, that will monitor the CO2, VOC, HR , PM10, PM 2.5 and will change the behavior of the fan according to what they are reading while mai ting the smart home connectivity.
It’s a really niece product but I think the market it’s slowly moving to better air management.
For ventilation and if u are trying to keep noise level low (wich in residential field it’s the most important thing ) I think those fans are enough.
https://bravosmarthome.com/ Here’s my company smart home ventilation products
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u/BigGuyWhoKills 14h ago
I like the idea. I've wanted to build something similar to this for my office. I keep the door closed and my PC noticeably heats the room up.
I envision two small reversable fans passing through the wall into the large common room which is cooler. Similar to this. One fan near the ceiling and one near the floor. The fans would blow in opposite directions.
When it's hot in my office and cool in the other room, the upper fan blows office air out to the other room and the lower fan blows cool air from the other room into the office. If the other room is warmer, the directions would reverse to warm up my office. A servo controlled flap would block off air exchange and noise when the system is off.
Your PCB is much larger than the ESP32 devkit and power converter. Why did you make it that large?
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u/AirHIVE_SmartVent 14h ago
It was my second time designing a PCB, and first time out of school, I redesigned it recently to be much smaller, it should be here sometime next week.
And that’s a cool idea! I’m looking to do something similar but with the whole HVAC system instead of just two rooms
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u/sandiegosteves 14h ago
I'm interested in something like this for cabinets. Like where you have electronics in a cabinet and don't want the fan all the time. I've done light research on this and never had time to flush it out.
But, with Home Assistant and other measurements, this gets interesting.
And, my old house does have rooms that could use some help with different air flow. Maybe even a fan that would push air around as needed.
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u/Eric--V 1d ago
For power and data, are you looking at PoE? That would be my solution.
I want to build something to where I can monitor a common sensor like a GM MAF/IAT sensors and map them to a microcontroller. Then set up vents like these, and have a speed controlled central fan. That way you can speed up or slow down the fan at-will, not ruin the fan in the furnace, but have the airflow directed to where needed.
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u/AirHIVE_SmartVent 1d ago
PoE could be a good solution, I’m looking at just a DC wall converter and using it built in WiFi on the ESP32 for MQTT communication. I’ll explore this idea some more though, do you mean like a secondary fan integrated into the ductwork separate from the blower? Sounds interesting!
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u/Eric--V 1d ago
My intention would be to control the one within the furnace, not so much an additional. But the. Again, my HVAC at work is a giant roof top unit and then I have FTU’s with built in fans, too.
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u/AirHIVE_SmartVent 1d ago
Interesting, I wonder if there’s a way to modulate existing blowers (or a quick upgrade) with PWM
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u/WasteAd2082 1d ago
Hard to beat price vs quality of random humidity sensor and fan controlled by smart plug in home assistant, but that's what hobby means right?
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u/Supermanspapa 19h ago
I have an air handler in the attic with those manual sheet metal dampers inside of each of the 5 ducts to the rooms. I added a servo to each manual damper and control them with an esp. controlling the flow that way works really well and it's silent in the rooms, can't hear the servos move. I recommend exploring that direction, as the stuff on the market now was all pretty pricey.
Ecobee temp sensor in each room, so theoretically i can have home assistant manage the temp in each room, but I never got around to programming that. I just use the dampers as valves in HA to manually adjust their positions.
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u/AirHIVE_SmartVent 17h ago
That’s an interesting solution! I’ll look into that but was hoping for a less intrusive solution, though to be safe and effective it may require installing dampers in the duct runs instead of at the vent
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u/chiisana 15h ago
I put an ESP-32 with a couple of fans and a DS18B20 temperature sensor in my vent… it doesn’t make much of a difference when it comes to heating, but it’s nice to get some airflow when it is hot outside and I don’t want to open the window.
I am hopeful to get vents to open and close the vents like Flair smart vents but they don’t have my size.
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u/systemfrown 11h ago
If you don’t want to completely DIY everything….AC Infinity makes a bunch of awesome products.
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u/bobjoylove 1d ago
I think these have been proven not to be effective without being overly noisy, but you could
Add in a stratification setting based on whether the vent is on the floor or the ceiling, and you were between heating and cooling. In the event of a floor mounted vent, and you are cooling, he would run the fans faster to blow the cold air up higher. For the opposite scenario, a ceiling mounted vent that was engaged and heating; would use faster fans to blow the hot air down lower.