This page outlines some of the final project ideas we considered implementing for the electrical engineering final year project design. We looked at X10 Hardware as well as studying the feasibility of applying a hack to a chat client to interface the cell phone with the computer.

Senior Project Ideas

The following is a list of ideas we came up with over the course of a few months when considering ideas for our electrical engineering project.

Chat Client

At the beginning of the first semester, after the meeting we had with our sponsor, we thought about finding a way to chat with our computer at home while we are not in. We thought of connecting the desired appliances to the computer, then using some kind of web messenger which allows us to text message the computer, we could chat with it. In this approach, we thought of writing some code that would translate the text messages for the computer and tell the computer what to do in the home. In the mean time, we were looking for some alternative approaches for our senior project.

 


 

X-10 Hardware

We were looking for solutions for the first approach when our professor informed us about the existence of X10 home automation and control kits. We looked for X10 hardware to figure out what it is and how it works.  We came up with an X10 Touch Tone Controller which could control lights and appliances throughout the home from any convenient location. Getting to this approach made us think about omitting the computer from our previous design and considering employing the X10 design. This would let us start the project with an easier approach. The X10 Touch Tone Controller could transmit signals to some small X10 modules over the existing house wiring. We could plug lamps into Lamp Modules, appliances into Appliance Modules, and replace wall switches with Wall Switch Modules. With the X10 hardware we could control virtually everything electrical in the home. Some features of the X10 Touch Tone Controller are listed below:

• Turns on or off up to 10 lights/appliances over the telephone.
• Controls heating/air conditioning.
• Lets us remotely control up to eight X10 Modules from any convenient location in the home. We could plug lamps and appliances into X10 Modules, and replace wall switches with X10 Wall Switch Modules, to control important inside and outside security lights.
• Send signals to X10 Modules over your existing house wiring, no additional wiring necessary.
• Turn on/off ALL lights connected to Lamp Modules and Wall Switch Modules with the touch of a button



Figure 1- X10 Home Automation System(From X10 official website)

This approach would allow us to set some security functions.

• A Personal Identification Number (PIN) (0-999) could be set. Use one, two, or three digits as desired.
• The Ans Delay switch could be set to Min (for 15 seconds delay), or Max (for 35 seconds delay) before the unit answers a call.
• The Touch Tone Controller would reply to us whether the required task is done or not by replying with a specific number of beeps which would be different for on and off positions. The Controller is showed in more detail in Figure 2.

Figure 2 – X10 Touch Tone Controller(From the user manual)

We bought two X10 devices, the Touch Tone Controller and a wall module. We came to the end of the first semester with these devices. Before the beginning of the second semester, we found another device which was the PIC-GSM Cellular Development board and we found this approach a great development board for cellular and remote monitoring of applications.

 


 

PIC-GSM

With the PIC-GSM, we could easily monitor and control the home from anywhere there is cell phone coverage with a GSM cellular account. We could insert any GSM SIM card and start accessing the board remotely over the cellular network. The board is shown in Figure 3. This was our final approach and we continued the project using this board. How we programmed this board and the way it functions is discussed in detail in chapters 3 and 4. THis is the design we chose to use for our final year project in electrical engineering.

 

Figure 3 – The PIC-GSM board

Using this board would allow us to switch on and off relays remotely by SMS, monitor and toggle the status of any GPIO pin, speak or listen on the audio channel of the board, and even monitor the built-in temperature sensor. The built-in GSM module has an on-board antenna allowing you to use this module as a GPRS modem connected to your computer too. A panic button and alarm inputs can dial your phone and report for alarm or send you an SMS message. This approach seemed much better and more modern to us and we thought it would be much more programmable and much more expandable than the previous approach. We contacted our sponsor about the idea and it was approved. We returned the X10 hardware and purchased the PIC-GSM Development Board to begin developing the computer engineering project.