e house

a GT Earth project by Ayan Kishore, David Liu, Vikram Sivakumar

Faculty Advisor: Dr. James O. Hamblen

The e-house DesignWhat is e-house?The e-house is a home automation system primarily designed to save household energy consumption. Home automation systems available in the market provide the user control of lights and electric appliances from a central location in the house or using a remote control.

The e-house has an embedded computer which controls lighting appliances, heaters, air-conditioners, fans, humidifiers, dehumidifiers and other gadgets using a smart energy-saving algorithm to reduce energy consumption. The system is controlled with a feature-intensive control panel at the embedded computer. Further appliances can be controlled from anywhere in the world using a PDA or a laptop connected to the Internet using a wireless connection.

The three components of the e-house are

1) Home Automation UnitIt consists of the X10 transmitter and the X10 receiver nodes. The transmitter is connected to and controlled by the In-Home Control Unit. It uses signals transmitted through power lines to communicate with the receiver nodes. The nodes connect electrical appliances to the power line from a wall outlets.

2) In-House Control Unit

The Ebox II serves as the central control unit for the e-house system. It interfaces to the home automation unit through the serial port and to local sensors through the parallel port. It is connected to the Internet in order to gather current weather conditions and to allow for remote access. Home automation is accomplished by feeding Internet and local information to the control algorithm

2) Mobile Control Unit

This unit (PocketPC-phone, PDA, laptop) allows for remote control of the system.

LocationThe e-house can be easily configured for any location in the US. One simply needs to change the zip code.

Weather Icon

Quick view of current weather conditions.

Weather alert with Audio Warning

The weather alert box lights up and flickers if a weather alert has been issued for the location (it is synched with the Weather Channel warning system). Details about the alert can be viewed by clicking the warning box. Further, if audio is enabled, an audio speech warning giving the description of the alert can be heard.

Humidex based ControlHumidex is the temperature perceived by human beings (“real feel” temperature). It is a measure that incorporates humidity and dew point into the measurement of temperature. When this feature is enabled, all temperatures are replaced by humidex which triggers the devices accordingly.

PDA connectivity

This area shows the status of connectivity to a remote device. It indicates if there is a change initiated by the remote device.

Performance Metricse-house keeps a log of how long an appliance has been on which is used to display the electricity bill for usage so far into the month. Also the electricity bill for the full month is extrapolated by assuming that the remaining days in the month will have the current user settings. The user can therefore change settings and see how the bill will change for the month.

Turn off allTurn of all lamps/all devices provides for a quick option to configure the e-house when going away from home. This option can be triggered remotely as well. All previous e-house settings are resumed when one comes out of the Turn Off All Mode.

Umbrella and Warm Clothing

IconThe warm clothing icon lights up if it going to be very cold in the day. The umbrella icon is lit if it is predicted to rain, thus warning the user to carry out an umbrella.

Override DetailsDisplays information on manual override of the appliance. Users are allowed to specify times when they want a device in a particular status with no e-house energy saving control.

CodeDisplays the house code (A-P) and the device code (1-16) of the X10 node connected to the respective appliance.

StatusDisplays operational status of a device. (On/Brighten/Dim/Off for lamps and On/Off for other appliances)

Current Indoor ConditionsDisplay of indoor temperature and humidity measured by the sensor

Preferred temperatureDisplay of preferred temperature entered by the user. The preferred temperature and humidity level can be easily updated at any time.

Device NameDisplays user given name of an a connected appliance. The e-house has intelligent control for lighting, heating, cooling and humidity control devices. But any other appliance can be connected and controlled from the system.

Remote e-house ControlThis allows a remote device running Windows Mobile or Windows CE to connect to the e-house. The remote device has access and control over settings of the appliances.

Future-aware ControlWhen enabled, the e-house can adjust cooling and heating conditions based on predicted data for future weather. For instance, if it is known that temperature will be dropping in an hour, the e-house reduces air-conditioning.

Sky-based Lighting ControlThis option allows the e-house to control the brightness of lamps connected to it according to weather or sky information. For instance, if it is sunny outside, e-house will dim the lights to save energy.

Adaptive Night ControlThis mode is based on the observation that in summer it feels colder in the middle of the night and early morning in the Northern Hemisphere, and vice versa in winter. This is used to increase the preferred temperature by a few degrees during the night depending on time.

Add/Edit DeviceAdd Device allows a user to configure a new device by specifying the device name, house and device code, device type, current status and override detail (optional). Edit allows one to change settings of selected devices.

Fahrenheit to Celsius Changes unit of temperature for display (unit can be reverted)

eHouse

eBox II

Internet Access Point

Wireless Access Point

Users

SmartPhone

PDA

Laptop