A Microcontroller-based System for Lighting Control in an Office Building using IoT

Lighting is indispensable in buildings but accounts for a significant portion of energy consumption. Instead of using artificial lights that consume electricity, daylighting can significantly reduce energy consumption while pairing it with shading devices such as Venetian blinds to satisfy the visual comfort of building occupants. Indeed, artificial lighting will be used only when necessary, such as during nights and cloudy days. For these reasons, this research study proposes a design and development of a Smart Wearable System (SWS) with the Internet of Things (IoT) applications, a low-cost and low-power system on a chip microcontroller with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, that can be applied to any building to take full advantage of sunlight and improve building energy efficiency. The development of this SWS system has for objective to make it accessible and available for use in any office building in which its window(s) façade is oriented to the course of the Sun during the day. The function of this developed SWS system is to automatically adjust both the position and the slat angle of Venetian blinds according to the current Sun's position and weather situation and turns on the artificial lighting only when needed. This study ends, for now, with the presentation of simulation results obtained for the developed computer program that gives the Sun's coordinates such as azimuth and altitude for any time and day of the year.