University of Miami senior Project

Hi,
My name is Brian Lempert and I belong to a senior design project at University of Miami. We are looking to implement a system to measure the efficiency/coefficient of performance of a portable HVAC system.
What information could you provide me with that would help understand the process of implementing a system like this using Arduino? (eg. which sensors should we use, where should we connect them, software recommendations...)
Best Regards,

Brian Lempert
University of Miami

A number of airflow and temperature sensors measuring energy and power on the air side. Maybe there is a need for humidity sensors as well. The energy content of air changes with humidity.
Voltage and current sensors measuring electric power and energy on the electrical side. The algoritm must be chosen considering the motor control, if some form of VFD is used the watmeters sample rate must be high enough to cope with the harmonics

brianlem:
Hi,
My name is Brian Lempert and I belong to a senior design project at University of Miami. We are looking to implement a system to measure the efficiency/coefficient of performance of a portable HVAC system.
What information could you provide me with that would help understand the process of implementing a system like this using Arduino? (eg. which sensors should we use, where should we connect them, software recommendations...)
Best Regards,

Brian Lempert
University of Miami

This sounds remarkably like it should be the first part of your project. You need to ask more specific questions. We aren't going to put together your project for you. Your first step is to establish what you need to measure, then establish how you'll measure them (IE what sensors to use), then look into what microcontroller to do all of this on (Or maybe you can use a Laptop and something like LabVIEW). You also need to figure out your limits, like costs, size, precision, speed of execution, required outputs, and such. If you have any questions about something specific, feel free to ask, but honestly, your senior design course is possibly one of the most practical classes that I took in college, and it helps when you learn how do to this yourself, and you can learn a lot about functioning in the real world of engineering from it if the course is done properly.

Sounds like you have a lot of research to do. I'd look at Digikey, Sparkfun, etc and maybe Omega for sensors (Depends on your budget).