A wireless instrumentation control system based on low-cost single board computer gateways

Nowadays, most of the automatized measurement processes are carried out by VISA (Virtual Instrument Software Architecture) compatible instruments, that execute the instructions provided by a host computer connected through wired standard buses, as USB (Universal Serial Bus), GPIB (General-Purpose Instrumentation Bus), PXI (PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation) or Ethernet. To overcome the intrinsic limitations associated to these wired systems, this work presents an instrumentation control system based on the IEEE 802.11 wireless communications standard. Intended for instruments having a USB control port, this port is connected to a gateway based on a compact Raspberry Single Board Computer (SBC) and thus the instrument can be connected to the host computer via Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), easily allowing the deployment of an ad-hoc instruments communication network in the working area or its connection to a previously deployed general purpose WiFi network. Developed under Python, the operation commands, wireless link protocol, and USB connection allow two modes of operation to provide system flexibility: a live mode, where commands are sent individually from the host computer to the selected instrument; and a standalone mode, where a full measurement process can be entirely downloaded in the gateway to be autonomously executed on the instrumentation. The system performance in both operation modes, distance of operation, time latencies, and operating lifetime in battery operation have been characterized

The energy and thermal performance of UK modular residential buildings

This research concerns the in-use performance of light-gauge steel modular construction used for residential purposes. The aim was to investigate ways to reduce the in-use energy consumption of new buildings, while ensuring thermal comfort. Data were collected from two case study buildings in the UK, one in Loughborough and the other in London, using a variety of methods including building measurement, building monitoring, inspections, and a detailed review of the construction documentation. The case study buildings were monitored using EnOcean enabled wireless sensor networks and standalone temperature sensors. Monitoring data included electricity consumption in individual rooms, often by end use, space heating use, internal temperature and relative humidity, and external temperature. Building measurements included blower door tests to measure fabric air leakage rates, infrared thermal imaging to identify fabric defects and weaknesses, and ventilation system flowrate measurements. Inspections and the review of documentation allowed problems with design, manufacture and construction to be identified. A particular concern for thermally lightweight construction is the risk of overheating, therefore overheating analyses were undertaken. The research identified weaknesses in the design, construction and operation of the case study buildings resulting in increased energy use and poor thermal comfort, particularly overheating. The modular construction studied requires specific design changes to improve the fabric and building services, in order to reduce energy use. There are also specific recommendations for quality control on site to ensure critical stages are correctly completed, such as installing rigid insulation. There are also more general recommendations for how a company operates because this can influence performance; there ought to be greater attention to holistic design and greater collaboration with suppliers and contractors to determine robust solutions. Overheating was a problem in the London case study, and more research is required to understand the scale of the problem. Avoidance of overheating must be a focus in the design of new buildings. The findings suggest that once the problems with the design and quality control on site are rectified, offsite modular construction can be used to consistently and reliably provide low energy homes

Development of a user-friendly, low-cost home energy monitoring and recording system

This paper reports research undertaken to develop a user-friendly home energy monitoring system which is capable of collecting, processing and displaying detailed usage data. The system allows users to monitor power usage and switch their electronic appliances remotely, using any web enabled device, including computers, phones and tablets. The system aims to raise awareness of consumer energy use by gathering data about usage habits, and displaying this information to support consumers when selecting energy tariffs or new appliances. To achieve these aims, bespoke electrical hardware, or ‘nodes’, have been designed and built to monitor power usage, switch devices on and off, and communicate via a Wi-Fi connection, with bespoke software, the ‘server’. The server hosts a webpage which allows users to see a real-time overview of how power is being used in the home as well as allowing scheduled tasks and triggered tasks (which respond to events) to be programmed. The system takes advantage of well standardised networking specifications, such as Wi-Fi and TCP, allowing access from within the home, or remotely through the internet. The server runs under Debian Linux on a Raspberry Pi computer and is written in Python, HTML and JavaScript. The server includes advanced functionality, such as device recognition which allows users to individually monitor several devices that share a single node. The openPicus Flyport is used to provide Wi-Fi connectivity and programmable logic control to nodes. The Flyport is programmed with code compiled from C

There's a monster in my kitchen: using aversive feedback to motivate behaviour change

In this paper we argue that “persuasive technologies,” developed to motivate behaviour change in users, have so far failed to exploit the established body of empirical research within behavioural science. We propose that persuasive technologies may benefit from both adapting to individual preferences, and a constructive use of aversive, in addition to appetitive, feedback. We detail an example application that demonstrates how this approach can be incorporated into an application designed to train users to adopt more environmentally friendly behaviours in their domestic kitchens

Networked Occupancy Sensor System

Energy is often wasted on systems that are used to provide services such as light, heating, air conditioning and ventilation. If these services were intelligently controlled, there is potential for significant improvements in energy conservation. A system including room sensors, database, and webserver was designed, constructed, and implemented over the course of this project. Sensors report occupancy and light status and temperature. Real-time room data is available via the webserver and is archived in the database. The system is networked via Ethernet and powered using the power over Ethernet (802.3af) standard

A more efficient technique to power home monitoring systems using controlled battery charging

Home energy monitoring has recently become a very important issue and a means to reduce energy consumption in the residential sector. Sensors and control systems are deployed at various locations in a house and an intelligent system is used to efficiently manage the consumed energy. Low power communication systems are used to provide low power consumption from a smart meter. Several of these systems are battery operated. Other systems use AC/DC adapters to supply power to sensors and communication systems. However, even using low-power technology, such as ZigBee, the power consumption of a router can be high because it must always be powered on. In this work, to evaluate power consumption, a system for monitoring energy usage and indoor air quality was developed. A technique is proposed to efficiently supply power to the components of the system. All sensor nodes are battery operated, and relays are used to control the battery charging process. In addition, an energy harvesting system based on solar energy was developed to power the proposed system.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Basic Home Automation Using Smart Sockets with Power Management

The power generated in today’s time is dominated using fossil fuels that may get exhausted within the coming decades. Monitoring and management of the energy consumption hold a prime standing due to the discrepancy between power demand and production. Power meters are a part of every household, which provides us with a measurement of the overall power consumed in units. The problem with them is that they do not provide us with the individual consumption of an electrical appliance leaving customers unsatisfied with the electricity bills. This paper presents the design and application of a smart power management system (SPMS) using a variety of sensors combined with an Arduino microcontroller. This will be replacing conventional home sockets with smart sockets, allowing us to cover the monitoring, control and safety aspects of any individual appliance in the house. This system is based on a newly evolving field worldwide, called the Internet of Things (IoT). The SPMS will be measuring the current, voltage, power factor and power consumed. Along with these measurements, it can also control the power state of the device and help protect against overvoltage and overcurrent. This is basically a home automation system, in combination with smart power management, all controlled and monitored by our smartphones. The edge this device has over conventional energy monitoring systems is that it allows the user to have an exact idea of individual power consumption plus the billing on a daily basis and take measures to reduce it

IoTsafe, Decoupling Security from Applications for a Safer IoT

The use of robust security solutions is a must for the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and their applications: regulators in different countries are creating frameworks for certifying those devices with an acceptable security level. However, even for already certified devices, security protocols have to be updated when a breach is found or a certain version becomes obsolete. Many approaches for securing IoT applications are nowadays based on the integration of a security layer [e.g., using transport layer security, (TLS)], but this may result in difficulties when upgrading the security algorithms, as the whole application has to be updated. This fact may shorten the life of IoT devices. As a way to overcome these difficulties, this paper presents IoTsafe, a novel approach relying on secure socket shell (SSH), a feasible alternative to secure communications in IoT applications based on hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP and HTTP/2). In order to illustrate its advantages, a comparison between the traditional approach (HTTP with TLS) and our scheme (HTTP with SSH) is performed over low-power wireless personal area networks (6loWPAN) through 802.15.4 interfaces. The results show that the proposed approach not only provides a more robust and easy-To-update solution, but it also brings an improvement to the overall performance in terms of goodput and energy consumption. Core server stress tests are also presented, and the server performance is also analyzed in terms of RAM consumption and escalation strategies

Wireless mains sensor for monitoring domestic energy consumption

Abstract. Past studies have shown that awareness of energy consumption can lead to reduction in electricity usage and that real-time, per-appliance data on electricity consumption would provide greater utility and actionable information. Yet, the customers of today’s utility companies typically have to be content with data that is aggregated, delayed and difficult to access. Comprehensive real-time data would also aid in optimizing energy consumption with respect to dynamic pricing and avoiding peak consumption periods. The objective of this thesis was to design and manufacture a wireless sensor for continuous and real-time metering of the energy consumption of a household in the UBI-AMI system version 2. The resulting Mains sensor reads the total energy consumption from the kilowatt hour meter using either a galvanic or an optical connection. The individual loads of the fuses in the circuit breaker panel are measured with Hall sensors. An 8-bit microcontroller collects analog measurements, conducts 10-bit ADC and transmits the resulting digital data to the UBI-AMI system using a commercial 6LoWPAN radio module and the CoAP protocol. The data enables the differentiation of the energy consumption of integrated and built-in elements such as floor heating and sauna from the total energy consumption of the household. The Mains sensor was tested with a demonstrator that comprised of a fuse board, a kilowatt hour meter and sockets for connecting loads. The Mains sensor was found to be flawless in reading the total energy consumption from the kilowatt hour meter using a galvanic connection. The sensor was able to read 84% of fast pulses and showed 4% surplus with slow pulses if the optical connection was used. The Hall sensors had a maximum average error of 0.47% with an active power, in comparison to a commercial energy meter. These results show that the Mains sensor provides sufficiently accurate and reliable information for improving the awareness of energy consumption of a household.Langaton sähköpäätaulusensori kotitalouden energiankulutuksen seuraamiseen. Tiivistelmä. Tutkimusten mukaan tietoisuus energiankulutuksesta voi johtaa sähkön käytön vähenemiseen, ja että tosiaikainen, laitekohtainen kulutustieto olisi hyödyllisempää. Silti nykyisin sähköyhtiöiden asiakkaiden täytyy tyypillisesti tyytyä kulutustietoihin, jotka on kerätty kokonaiskulutuksesta, ovat käytettävissä viiveellä, ja joihin on vaikea päästä käsiksi. Kattava tosiaikainen informaatio myös auttaisi huippukulutuskausien välttämisessä ja energiankulutuksen optimoinnissa dynaamisen hinnoittelun suhteen. Tämän diplomityön tavoitteena oli suunnitella ja valmistaa langaton sensori kotitalouden energiankulutuksen jatkuvaan ja tosiaikaiseen mittaukseen osana UBI-AMI-järjestelmän versiota 2. Syntynyt sähköpäätaulusensori lukee kokonaisenergiankulutuksen kilowattituntimittarista joko galvaanista tai optista yhteyttä käyttäen. Yksittäiset ryhmäkohtaiset kuormat mitataan sulaketaulusta Hallin antureilla. 8-bittinen mikrokontrolleri kerää analogiset mittaukset ja muuntaa ne digitaaliseksi dataksi, joka lähetetään UBI-AMI-järjestelmälle käyttäen kaupallista 6LoWPAN-radiomoduulia ja CoAP-protokollaa. Mittausdata mahdollistaa integroitujen ja kiinteästi asennettujen sähkölaitteiden, esimerkiksi lattialämmityksen ja saunan, energiankulutuksen eriyttämisen kotitalouden kokonaiskulutuksesta. Sähköpäätaulusensorin toiminta arvioitiin testilaitteistolla, joka koostui sulaketaulusta, kilowattituntimittarista ja pistorasioista kuormien liittämistä varten. Sähköpäätaulusensorin havaittiin lukevan kokonaisenergiankulutuksen kilowattituntimittarista virheettömästi galvaanista yhteyttä käyttäen. Optista yhteyttä käytettäessä sensori kykeni lukemaan 84 % nopeista pulsseista ja hitaat pulssit saivat sensorin mittaamaan käytetyn energian 4% todellista suuremmaksi. Hallin antureilla suurin keskimääräinen virhe kaupalliseen mittariin verrattuna oli 0,47 % pätötehollisella kuormalla. Tulosten perusteella sähköpäätaulusensori antaa riittävän tarkkaa ja luotettavaa tietoa energiankulutuksesta ja sitä voidaan käyttää energiankulutuksen tietoisuuden lisäämiseen kotitalouksissa