Portal 2.0 - Creating a CO2 Sensor Trigger

The video below goes over how to create a CO2 Sensor Trigger within Portal 2.0. This video and others can be found at our Growlink University webpage.

 

 

Audio Transcript:

Hey, this is Josh with Growlink, and in today's walkthrough, we'll be going over how to make a CO2 sensor trigger within Portal 2.0. You'll start by logging into Portal 2.0 and accessing the controller's dashboard for whichever room you wish to make this rule for, followed by navigating to the rules section at the top of the web page.  

  

Once in the rules page, you're going to specify the rule folder and default rule group that you wish to make this rule in. In this example, we're going to choose the default rule group and default rule folder.  

  

Then we're going to make a sensor trigger. First, we're going to just make a name to identify this rule. We'll call it an example CO2 sensor trigger.  

 

Next, we want to specify a time of day for this rule. You'll see we have a couple of different options. In this example, we're going to start with all day and explain some nuances later on.  

 

Next, we're going to choose a sensor that we want to associate with turning on and off our particular device. In this case, we want to look at the CO2 readings in the room. So, we're going to select room CO2 from our environmental sensor.  

 

Next, we want to choose what device we want to activate. In this case, we have several different CO2 devices that we could select from. The first output is a CO2 device set up as a CO2 regulator. If I select this device, one will notice that the time of day has now changed to day only. Devices that are set up as a CO2 regulator or CO2 burner can only be active during the controller's day range because plants don't utilize CO2 at night and would effectively just be a waste of CO2.  

  

If you set the device type of your CO2 regulator to none or to a valve, that logical restriction disappears. So, for example, the second output is set to a device type of none. And if I select that output, I'm able to specify a custom time at which I want this CO2 valve to kick off or select all day.  

 

For commercial customers that have multi-room panels, setting their CO2 device to be a device type of none can allow them to specify the specific window of time they'd like their CO2 solenoid to activate based on their particular room's day range.  

  

For all other customers that have single room panels, having the CO2 device type set to CO2 regulator and set to day only will suffice. For this example, we'll just use the CO2 regulator device type example where it's set to day only.  

  

With those pieces covered, the next step is to set this as either a static or dynamic rule. In this case, we're going to leave it as a static rule as these are the most straightforward to set up. You designate the value at which you want the device to turn on and turn off.  

  

Moving on to the value, we're going to select a value of 1000 ppm that we want to be the midpoint or the value that we'd like it to keep at. Next, we're going to set a dead band, the range around that value that is going to determine when the CO2 solenoid kicks on and when it's allowed to turn off. In this case, we're going to set a dead band of about 100 ppm.  

 

For the activation point, we have two options, above set point and below set point. In this case, we're going to choose below set point because we'd like it to kick on the CO2 solenoid if it goes below a certain value and then kick off the solenoid when it reaches a value above our designated value.  

  

Once we've got all of these fields populated, not only will the logic summary sentence populate with a summary of the logic we're trying to employ, but also a graph visually representing the logic we're trying to employ.  

  

In this case, during the controller's daytime period, this device will be turned on when the room CO2 falls below 900 ppm and allowed to switch off when it hits 1100 ppm. With the rule being configured, all that's left is to add this rule and hit the update controller button at the top right of the webpage in order to push this configuration update to the controller.  

  

When the configuration update completes, this controller configuration will be pushed down to the controller itself and it will operate the output based on the rule logic that's been employed.

 

This concludes how you would make a CO2 sensor trigger within Portal 2.0.