First Semester 2008

Melvin Lee - Wireless Automation in the IDEAL House

The purpose for this project is to gather signals from measurement
sources and digitizing the signal for storage, analysis, and
presentation on a PC. This improves the overall environment for human
beings to live in by automating electrical appliances in the house
through Wireless Home Automation. For example, the user may want the
air-conditioning to be switched on at a certain time or when the user
enters the room, and when a certain temperature in the room is met, the
temperature is maintained.

Supervisor: H. Iu

Joshua Ng - Hand-Clap Activated Control System

This project intends to develop a hand-clap noise activating control
system. Imagine a control device which with the sound of a clap can
trigger a mechanized switch. In a futuristic environment, the simple
noise activated technology will provide users the convenience of turning
on or off their switches wherever they wish in their own home. Using
hand claps not only convenient, it is also very user friendly and
robust. More importantly the project will target the IDEAL House's goal
for automated assistance through robotic devices control sound and the
use of smart sensors, activators and detectors for automatic activation.

Supervisor: R. Togneri

Rui Sang - Cost Study for 8-element Microphone Array

For convenient and robust voice-activated control in the IDEAL House a
hands-free and head-free audio acquisition system is required. Rather
than use expensive and uncomfortable bluetooth microphones, a
microphone array can be used to both localise and then capture speaker
instructions whilst ignoring the background interference. Thus the
speaker is completely freed from the acquisition system (nothing has to
be worn or adorned) and can direct commands from anywhere in the room.
This project will carry out a cost study for building an 8-element
microphone array for the IDEAL House. Details of costs, components and
schematics will be provided for the possible purchase and fabrication
of a microphone array system for the IDEAL House.

Supervisor: R. Togneri

Robert Welsh - Voice Activated TV remote

One of the key interactions in a house environment is that of a
handheld remote for the home entertainment system. For most users this
is a source of frustration given the many remotes, complex commands and
need to see which buttons to use, and then press them and point the
remote in the right direction. In this project a voice-activated TV
remote system will be investigated. Both the dialog menu and grammar
will be designed and user evaluations carried out to examine the
reliability and useability of this mode of interaction.

Supervisor: R. Togneri

Year 2007

• an effective website design
• co-ordinating an effective logo design
• designing some sponsorship and promotional packages

Supervisor: C. Croft

Adam Neumann & Rohan Mathew - Backbone System

For more information be sure to look at their information pack.

The IDEAL house aims at promoting sustainability through the use of “intelligent” technology. It was started in 2007 and consists of a collection of projects run by students and academics from The University of Western Australia. The IDEAL house operates under the key assumption that a sustainable house will promote sustainable living. Our team envisions the IDEAL House as a “Smart Home” – and our project is to integrate home automation technology into the infrastructure. In 6 month we aim to develop:

• a platform for sponsors to demonstrate existing products and services.
• a proof of concept demonstrating how devices in the smart system will interconnect.
• a backbone which can be used by students researching new IDEAL house technology to develop, test and demonstrate their projects.

Fiqri Abdul - Investigation of Voice Technology

This project is basically to study / investigate what are the applications that can be withdrawn from the voice technology (i.e from speech synthesis, voice recognition technology, etc). Also, the project is intended to discover the feasibility of implementing voice technology in the IDEAL house including the weaknesses, problems, advantages, and advancement in the current voice technology. Besides, this project will take account what people say about the technology and how the technology could be applied to suit their lifestyle. The expected outcomes of this project are we will know what applications are required and how feasible this technology to be implemented in the IDEAL House.

This project requires student to do a survey to gather people views about the technology, research on current technology through magazines, journals, research papers, and investigating few samples of SMART Houses.
Supervisor:  R. Togneri

Johnny Lee - Investigation of Voice Technology: Hardware Feasability Study

In early 2007, The Electrical and Electronic Engineering Faculty of The University of Western Australia proposed a project called Voice-Activated Technology in the IDEAL Home.  My role in this project is to do a feasibility study on the hardware, mainly microphones and speakers that can be used in voice technology for the IDEAL home.  

Microphones pick up sound via the diaphragm of the microphone. It is attached to a magnet in the microphone, so that when it vibrates due to sound pressure, the change in characteristics of the diaphragm will induce a voltage change in a resistor, which will in turn be interpreted by software as data. This is further explained below with each different diaphragm type.
Supervisor: R. Togneri

Joel Cheong - Investigation of Voice Technology: Software Feasibility Study

This report presents the findings made in the evaluation of possible speech recognition software for use in the Intelligently Designed Engineering for Advanced Living (IDEAL) House Project. First, a description of work done, including sponsorship will be discussed. Second, the evaluation of software will be presented. Finally, conclusions to which software best fits the needs of the IDEAL house and future work are presented towards the end of the report.
Supervisor: R. Togneri

Xin Loh – Solid State Lighting

Solid State Lighting is starting to become the dominant technology in everyday lighting due to it's very cheap cost and high efficiency at converting electrical energy into light. It is predicted that within the next 10 to 20 years, solid state lights will replace fluorescent lights as the dominant light source used in everyday lighting applications.

This project aims to integrate solid state lighting into the IDEAL House. This project is not so much about the design of individual LEDs, but rather their application and integration into everyday household lighting systems, and how to apply/integrate solid state lighting as cost effectively as possible. This includes the design of lamps that distribute light evenly in all directions, and also systems that reduce the voltage we get from the mains to a voltage small enough for LEDs to function on.
Supervisor:  B. Nener