When elevators first turned out there, they have been managed manually. They required operators, similar to trains and different automobiles, to manage path and velocity. However, after all, it wasn’t too lengthy earlier than everybody realized that guide operation wasn’t obligatory, as elevator motion could be very constrained and predictable. Even so, elevator management methods are fascinating as a result of they fulfill particular logistical necessities with most effectivity. If that sort of factor piques your curiosity, you’ll wish to try BorisDigital’s simulated elevator management system.
Until you occur to personal a constructing with a number of flooring, you in all probability don’t have an actual elevator you could go tinkering with. For those who’re one of many few folks in our viewers that does have an elevator, we nonetheless advise in opposition to that form of factor. A simulated expertise by means of mockups is a extra sensible different. However that doesn’t should be boring and you may nonetheless get the entire enjoyable of bodily buttons, sensible operation, and real drawback fixing.
Boris achieved that with a system design consisting of two panel sorts: one for the elevator automobile and one for every flooring. The system can deal with a number of panels of the latter kind. There’s additionally a separate controller for guiding a form of hydraulic system that strikes a miniature elevator automobile, which is an fascinating addition if you wish to see one thing transferring.
The elevator automobile panel incorporates a Raspberry Pi 4 Mannequin B single-board pc and it’s the central “mind” of the entire system. That panel has a button for every flooring, door shut and door open buttons, an alarm button, and full-color LCD display. That display can show the present flooring, in addition to constructing data and even ads such as you may see in an actual tower. Boris additionally included an upkeep menu accessible by means of that panel interface.
The elevator name button panels for every flooring comprise Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W boards. These are microcontroller improvement boards and never single-board computer systems just like the Raspberry Pi within the elevator automobile panel. A Pico 2 W additionally controls the relays for the hydraulic system.
Every Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W board communicates with the elevator automobile’s Raspberry Pi 4 Mannequin B by means of MQTT messages despatched over WiFi, to allow them to go anyplace inside vary of the native WiFi community. In the actual world, the {hardware} can be hardwired, however that is adequate for the simulated expertise.
This gave Boris the flexibility to experiment with elevator management ideas, together with the algorithms that elevators use to resolve the place to go when there are a number of simultaneous requests on completely different flooring.
