Design of a new PID controller based on Arduino Uno R3 with application to household refrigerator

Abstract

A refrigeration system to maintain a desired compartment temperature usually uses a thermostat as an on-off controller. In fact, the thermostat has some disadvantages. The main problem of system which is related to the thermostat is the biggest energy consumption in household appliances. In this paper, to solve the problem was designed a new PID controller based on an Arduino Uno R3 with application to a household refrigerator. In this case, the Arduino Uno was uploaded with PID controller algorithm. Then, in implementation to determine controller parameter values was defined new criteria. After that, to obtain the best refrigeration system performance was also proposed new performance criteria based on experimental data. The experimental results showed that the proposed control system was able to maintain the desired temperature with steady-state error of about 0.044°C. In addition, in steady state the control system for the refrigerator was able to the energy saving of about 30% and it almost did not depend on cooling load quantity.