A

Seminar On

Smart Home Heating Control using Raspberry Pi and

Blynk IoT Platform
Mr.Aniket Dange

Third Year of Computer Engineering (2019 Course)

SND College of Engineering & Research Centre,
Babhulgaon , Yeola.

PRN :72151752J Department of Computer Engineering

2022-23, Sem. V 2022-23
+91-9561431161
 aniketmdange100@gmail.com Under The Guidance of

Guide STC Coordinator HOD Principal

Prof . Daund.R.P Prof Gursal P S Dr.U.B.Pawar Dr.D.M.Yadav
 A STC Presentation
On
Smart Home Heating Control using Raspberry Pi
and Blynk IoT Platform

Mr.Aniket Dange

TE Computer Engineering,
SND College of Engineering and Research Center, Babhulgaon,
Yeola , Dist Nashik, MS (India)

Guide STC Coordinator HOD Principal

Prof . Daund.R.P Prof Gursal P S Dr.U.B.Pawar Dr.D.M.Yadav

Content

Introduction
Problem Definition
 System description
Blynk platform
Hardware components
Programming
Flowchart
Advantages
Disadvantages
Conclusion
Reference
 Introduction
 I will present a complete control system of a smart home
electric heating, using Raspberry Pi single-board computer,
and Blynk IoT platform.
 The designed system measures the temperatures of the
heater and of the ambient air in the home, and in addition
extracts temperature forecast for the next day from the
Internet.
 According to those values, the system controls an electric
thermal storage (ETS) heater in the home.
 The measured values are presented in a dedicated mobile
application, and on a system display as well.
 Problem Definition
• The application of combined RPi and Blynk in order to create an
efficient and innovative smart home heating control system,
based on measured values and data extracted from the Internet.
• The main reasons why RPi is chosen over other available popular
platforms (above all, Arduino, or ESP8266) are as follows.
• It has built-in network interface (for communication with Blynk
server), whereas in other platforms a new shield should be
added.
• In addition, an Arduino platform would require additional RTC
chip/module which measures time and date (which are needed
for proper system operation).
 System description
 ETS heater
• The overall goal of the system is to remotely control
an electric thermal storage heater .
• This type of heater is very popular in the Eastern
Europe, as it offers advantages such as low cost of
heating (in places without other options to heat the
house), simple installation and use, and high
reliability.
• ETS heater is a home heating device that contains
several ceramic bricks.
  System requirements
• The designed system uses RPi as a central unit,
which communicates with the ETS heater via
the Blynk platform.
• All the measured values are shown at a
dedicated display.
• The system is connected to the Internet via
the Blynk mobile application, and extracts the
temperature forecast from the Yahoo website.
 BLYNK PLATFORM
A. Platform properties

 Blynk is a software platform which enables

connection of RPi, Arduino, ESP8266 and many other
hardware platforms to the Internet, and at the same
time their control using a mobile application.
 It has capability of displaying measured values from
sensors, storing those data in memory and sending
notifications and e-mails.
B.Installation of the Blynk server :-

 Blynk server is open-source, written in Java.

 It uses Netty framework.
 It is responsible for the communication between
smartphone application and the library installed on RPi.
 The system requirements are: Java 8/11 (OpenJDK or
Oracle), an OS supporting Java, minimum 30 MB of
RAM, open ports 9443 (for smartphone application and
hardware with SSL) and 8080 (for hardware without
SSL).
C. Installation of the Blynk application on
smartphone:-

 Installation of the Blynk client Android

application is made from the Google Play.
 After the installation on a smartphone is
completed, a new account should be created.
 If a private Blynk server is used, this
information should be supplied during the
installation.
Block Diagram
 HARDWARE COMPONENTS

The used hardware components are:

 Two sensor
 Relay module
 LED display
 A. Sensors
DHT11:-

• The first sensor, DHT11, is used to measure the

ambient air temperature in the room.
• It includes an A/D converter, hence it generates a
digital signal at its output, which is connected to a
GPIO pin of RPi.
• For the communication with this sensor, the
Adafruit Python DHT library is used
DS18B20 Sensor:-

 The second sensor, DS18B20, is used to measure the

ETS heater temperature.
 The maximal allowed temperature is 125 degrees
Celsius, with the resolution of 9 to 12 bits.
 It communicates over 1-wire bus.
 Each sensor DS18B20 has a unique 64-bit serial
number, which enables to use as many sensors as
needed using only one wire.
C. LED display

 To show various information to the user, a 7-segments, 4- digits

LED display, based on the TM1637 chip is used .
 It displays the time, date, actual (measured) room temperature and
humidity.
 For the display control, two RPi GPIO pins are used: one for clock
and one for data.
 The communication with display is made using a special protocol,
which is similar to I2C but not completely compatible.
 For the display control, the library should be downloaded and
installed.
• D. Board
– A PCB is made with all presented hardware
components
• The board is connected to RPi using S/FTP cat
7 cable, which prevents EM disturbances from
surrounding devices.
 PROGRAMMING
A. Virtual pins

Virtual pins are the main concept used by Blynk for

communication between the hardware and Blynk smartphone
application
. They are not directly connected to any physical GPIO pin, but
can be treated as a kind of variable which is used to write and
read data.
During the reading or writing a value in the virtual pin, Blynk
generates an event and calls a dedicated function,
which is defined by: @blynk.handle_event('read VX'), where X is
the virtual pin number
B. Temperature measurement

 In order for the user to see, using the smartphone application,

the measured temperature, a new, Gauge widget, is added in the
application.
 Equally, virtual pin which will be used to measure the
temperature, its range, and color and format of displaying
information are defined
 The temperature is read each 5 seconds, provided that the
application is open.
 The function read_dht_sensor(pin) is written for the temperature
measurement.
C. Temperature control

 In order to control the temperature, another, Step V, widget is added

The buttons + and - are used to set the desired (referent) room
temperature.
The range of this temperature can be chosen in the between 16 and 25
degrees Celsius.
 Each press on the button + or - calls the function
set_wantedTemp(pin, value).
The desired value is, as already explained, used to control the ETS
heater: the measured temperature is each 300 seconds compared to
the desired value, and according to the difference between them, the
heating element is switched ON or OFF.
 SYSTEM IN OPERATION
• After launching, the program is connected to
the Blynk private server, and the smartphone
application is used to read the measured
values and control the heating.
• A current status of the program can be
checked any time using the command: sudo
systemctl status heatcloud.service.
• The application window shows the room
temperature (in yellow), the external
temperature (in cyan), the heater temperature
(in red), humidity (in red), the thermostat
command (+ and -), update button, display
button, light and fan. At the bottom, the
measured values during a chosen previous
period are shown graphically.
 Advantages
• Communication
• Automation and Control
• Information
• Time
• Saving money
 Disadvantages
• Compatibility
• Complexity
• Privacy/Security
 Conclusion
 The designed system works properly.
 A possible improvement would be to use more
advanced DHT22 sensor instead of DHT11.
 It offers better accuracy and broader range of the
temperature measurement.
 References
 [1] Online: https://www.raspberrypi.org
 [2] N. S. Yamanoor and S. Yamanoor, "High quality, low cost education
with the Raspberry Pi," 2017 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology
Conference (GHTC), San Jose, CA, 2017, pp. 1-5.
 [3] S. Saha et al., "GPS based smart spy surveillance robotic system using
Raspberry Pi for security application and remote sensing," 2017 8th IEEE
Annual Information Technology, Electronics and Mobile Communication
Conference (IEMCON), Vancouver, BC, 2017, pp. 705-709.
 [4] R. Johar, S. M. Qaisar, A. Subasi and R. F. Kurdi, "A Raspberry Pi
Based Event Driven Quasi Real Time Attendance Tracker," 2018 IEEE 3rd
International Conference on Signal and Image Processing (ICSIP),
Shenzhen, 2018, pp. 418-422.