Year 2008

Yogish Bhuvaneswara - Voice Activation and Sound Monitoring for Ideal House

This Project aims at controlling the electrical/electronic home appliances inside "IDEAL HOUSE" through voice commands recognized by Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.5 SDK client Edition (DSC) application loaded on IDEAL HOUSE Server machine. The recognized voice commands are then programmed to interact with the existing Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) control system using the "Ethereal" Network Protocol Analyzer.  (MEICT Project)
Supervisor: Dr. Roberto Togneri

Michael Eastwood - Renewable Energy System

Solar panels have been identified as the most appropriate renewable
power technology for the IDEAL House.  The renewable energy system will
comprise two independently-controlled solar arrays that will alter
their configuration depending on the time of year and input from the
House's occupants.  Solar power will be connected to the electricity
grid to reduce the House's power bill.  Automatic tilt adjustment will
position the arrays for optimum sunlight exposure on a seasonal basis.
User-controlled shade adjustment will extend the arrays over the north
face of the House, shading the windows according to the occupant's
taste for natural light.  These two systems together provide the means
to allow the arrays to be self-furling: in high winds or during
transport, the arrays will move flush to the roof and secure themselves
in place.
Supervisor: Dr. J. Henry

Joel Cheong - Speaker Identification for the IDEAL House

Presently, speech recognition has been implemented into the home via
the use of Dragon Naturally Speaking Software by Scansoft. This
software, like any speech recognition software, is speaker dependant.
As a work around, Scansoft has made use of speaker profiles, by
training each profile to be customised for different users. While this
has proved effective on a desktop environment, its efficiency drops in
a home environment due to the fact that it is not feasible for
occupants of the home to be switching profiles manually every time they
want to give the house a command. This project aims to overcome the
above problem by automatically switching profiles by use of speaker
identification technology.
Supervisor: Dr. R. Togneri

Mark Liew - Sound Monitoring in Homes

This project dwells into the search and experimentation of using sound
to monitor events that occur within a home. This project is intended
for the exploration of the use audio recognition over visual sensing in
an IDEAL Home enviroment. This form of monitoring looks into events
such as opening and closing of doors, cabinets, fire alarms going off
etc. This may finally be used to replace visual monitoring which may
prove invasive at times and implemented in homes for the aged as well.
Supervisor: Roberto Togneri

Year 2007

Timothy Wong – Wireless Home Automation for the IDEAL House

The aim of this project is to implement a wireless transceiver module suited to the needs of the Ideal House automation. This involves the programming of a wireless transceiver module to transmit and receive data, interfacing with a Micro controller Unit (MCU) which will initiate action such as turning electrical appliances on or off.
Supervisor: H. Iu

Zhen Xu – Micro Controller Unit (MCU) design

This project will interact with Timothy Wong's project (above). It involves the design and construction of an MCU to control the electrical appliances. Depending on the complexity of the processing required and the processing capabilities and memory available on the transceiver module, the processing will be performed either internally onboard or on an external computer. This project can be further extended to obtain readings from wireless sensors.
Supervisor: H. Iu

Matt Harley – Vision Processing in a Smart House Environment

The vision processing project for the IDEAL house has the aim of acquiring visual data, performing analysis and acting on critical events. Common applications of vision processing in the home of the future may include motion sensing, object tracking and behavioural recognition. These functions aid in important aspects throughout the house such as security, home automation and occupant care.

My project aims to investigate and design a self-sufficient sustainable power system for a home which will derive all its electrical power from sustainable sources in the most post-effective manner possible. This house will have adequate appliances to be habitable.
Supervisor: G. Bundell

Brent Chadwick – SCADA system for IDEAL House

The Intelligently Designed Engineering for Advanced Living (IDEAL) House is a project by the School of EE&CE to develop technology for the advancement of human habitation. The envisagement of the electrical aspect to the IDEAL House is to incorporate large sensor arrays to monitor occupant activities and provide a response to these activities. How to integrate these inputs and responses together into a practicable user friendly system is the principal aim of this sub project.

To achieve this goal, this project aims to develop a control system for the IDEAL House. This incorporates assisting in the selection of control system devices, their integration into the control system, and the management of these devices to provide a real time system response to events. Event logging, status monitoring, and optimisation of control processes are also tasks to be undertaken in the design. This is all encompassed by the development of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, which will run the IDEAL House.
Supervisor: G. Bundell

Julie Cheng – IDEAL House Solar Group

The main focus of the renewable energy investigated here will be solar power. In depth investigation will be made into solar electric systems and solar thermal systems to find the most feasible arrangement and components to be used. In addition, experimentation with the school's solar panel will be undertaken to measure solar output under varying weather conditions so that the design of the electric system can accommodate for days with less sunlight. A feasibility study will also be taken to see whether stand-alone solar systems for individual homes will be more cost effective compared to having solar power plants providing electricity for a community. Where extra power is required, other cost-effective renewable sources will be investigated, such as fuel cells and biogas, to encompass the sustainable power system.
Supervisor: J. Henry

Jason Liew – IDEAL House Power Options

One of the aims of the IDEAL House project is to produce a habitable and comfortable room using innovative technologies and renewable energy sources.

The objective of this specific project is to investigate, design and potentially build a self-sufficient sustainable power system or components of that system for a home which would derive all of its energy from sustainable sources in a cost-effective manner. The main focus is on solar power but wind and biomass will also be explored.

Part of the investigation will include experiments with solar panels to measure the solar output power spectrums. Also, the power requirements of a typical room will be gathered and projects from other universities will be examined.
Supervisor: J. Henry