Temperature Control for Computers

The project was designed for standalone computers to monitor and control the temperature and fan which can be run manually or autonomously.

The fan speed is adjusted by using the temperature readings in order to regulate temperature and noise. It can be configured to be either completely autonomous or set up to be configurable which makes the system flexible. The setting up of the features and parameters makes it also highly configurable. There are 2 Atmel Mega32 MCUs that controls the entire unit. One MCU is used for the main control unit while the other is for RF remote control, with inputs to the ADC of thermal sensors, port pins, RS232 serial connection, and output to the LCD. The specific settings of the unit are handled by the RF remote control.

A standard 4-pin PC Molex power connector powers off the main unit while a 9V battery powers off the remote control. A tradeoff between cooling performance and generated noise typically exists with such high spinning fans comes another problem of noise. Either manually adjustable fan speeds by the user or automatically by the CPU is used in dealing with traditional fan system problems.

Rest of the project