Wireless temperature monitoring system through IoT for domestic solar water heaters

Abstract

The popularization of solar water heaters in many houses makes it necessary to create an electronic tool for monitoring water temperature as a function of time. It should be easy to use and cost effective so most of the users can get it. This article presents the analysis of the problem, the design proposal, prototyping and test results of the development of a wireless temperature monitoring system in a domestic water heater tank. This device allows knowing the temperature of the heater in real time by using IoT (Internet of Things) technology. It uses the device's internal memory where machine learning algorithms customize settings that can trigger intelligent alarms such as water leak detection, under or over temperature, and efficiency loss. The device delivers the data to the user or to other devices (for further automation) by local Wi-Fi. The scalable architecture of IoT allows adding extra measurements for physical phenomena that affect the heater's performance, such as water flow, sun radiation and outdoor relative humidity. Those measurements can be easily integrated in a more complex system version for commercial or industrial customers. © 2019 IEEE.