Automated temperature regulated sauna system using programmable intelligent computer (PIC)

Abstract

Sauna is usually a small room or facility designed to relax its occupants through sweating and nowadays it is even used for social gathering or unique pastime. However saunas nowadays are operated manually by producing heat through water boiler or pouring water rocks inside the sauna room itself. This automated temperature regulated sauna system uses PIC 16F877A, temperature sensors (LM 35), water valve, motors, heater with modified circuit and some other component to develop four subsystems which are room temperature control system, automated water boiling and refilling system, time duration countdown system and water surface steam temperature control system. The steam for the sauna room is produced by water boiler that refills and boils automatically and the whole system is controlled by PIC without any monitoring. Besides that, the temperature in the sauna room is controlled in more than one direction to give an equally distributed heat in the room. In this project, system operation are written in C language before compiled using PCWH C-Compiler and downloaded into PIC in order to fulfil its objectives. Then the system is developed by soldering the circuits and interfacing hardware with programming. Later on, the circuits are assembled into a complete model that is packaged as a sauna room on top of a water boiler with modified circuit heater. This system provides an equally maintained temperature control system, requires less manpower, produces heat through slow and constant rate of steam, easy to handle and saves power with its two type of modes which are standby mode and active mode.