Design Philosophy and Practice of Microprocessor-Controlled Room Air Conditioner

Electrical home appliances go electronic rapidly these days. Figure 1 shows needs for a room air-conditioner to be. met by electronic control techniques ; seeds. The needs include power saving, comfortableness, low noise, improved function, operatability, and reliability. With the conventional mechanical control system, it is difficult to improve the comfortableness and operatability, and therefore, emphasis has been laid mainly on improvement of power consumption and noise characteristics. In contrast to this, an electronic control introduced to a room airconditioner can easily realize the following advantages: comfortableness due to finer thennostatic setting, operatability through feather touch operation and remote control, and reliability by a motor lock protection circuit. To get the maximum effect from a room air-conditioner equipped with an electronic control, the authors gave much thought to optimum daily and yearly room airconditioner operating patterns. With them, overcooling and overheating can be prevented, leading to simultaneous realization of power saving and healthy comfortableness. Such control is beyond the reach of the mechanical system, and this is an area where microprocessor control is most effective.