Hardware development of a prototype for determining the condition of buildings for efficient building renovation

Abstract

Intelligent use of energy in buildings is an important research area. In order to improve energy consumption, as a first step the building has to be monitored and energy usage data must be collected. The energetic physical defects in existing buildings need to be assessed and then systematically evaluated and analyzed. The results of this Analysis can further be used as a basis for efficient building renovation. This project aim to develop a prototype of handheld building scanner that can collect energy usage data of the building. Although the current prototype is planned to utilize a combination of infrared and visual data, in future the device will be extended to incorporate a wide range of sensors and measuring methods from radar (SAR), ultrasound or multispectral cameras. Information collected by the device can be used to evaluate the existing building substance energetically. The goal of this thesis is to combine a multitude of Flir Lepton sensors, to produce a 360-degree IR camera. The number of required cameras are large (>=8) due to the small opening angle of the camera modules. A commercially available visual camera is used to capture 360- degree shots along with the IR camera developed. The resulting prototype can capture infrared as well as visual images simultaneously, which can be further developed to calculate the energy usage data. This information can be used to detect anomalies such as pipe bursts, size and position of pipes, and analyze those rapidly in a nondestructive manner. In this thesis, two versions of the scanner will be developed, one with jumper wire connections and the other with PCB board designed.