The project evolved from the time I’ve posted my original idea and it is now my MSc thesis at Silesian University of Technology, Poland (accualy one of my MSc as I’m curently doing double – degree in association with Cranfield University, UK)


Background and motivations
A motivation for this project was to control remotely heating in a building. We can imagine a house which is used only few times in a year and for the economy reasons heating is turned of most of the time. It would be a great idea to have a possibility to control the temperature inside the house and worm it up before owner actually arrives at the place.
But the heating is not the only case, we could also heat water in the house if a boiler is used or simulate household members presence.

But what differs this particular project from many ‘intelligent building’ projects? This projects enables to meet all objectives mentioned above without building additional infrastructure. It is as simple as plugging a plug in to the socket and a node network will be created ad-hoc without any user interaction.

New design
Originally my project assumed that all nodes will be in range of master node. It is a simple case when master node can communicate with all nodes in the network. But my idea evolved and now my object is to create a wireless mesh network. A mesh network will enable do cover a wider area then in former design. As each node of a network can be a router, messages can be distributed along whole network, even if a node isn’t in a range of the master node. It will be necessary to develop communication protocols and implement a mesh routing protocol (probably AODV due to its simplicity, but it isn’t sure yet as other protocols i.e. DSR are investigated) .

Figure below shows overall project conception.


Current stage of development
As my original idea evolved I’ve redesigned hardware required for this project. Currently I’m waiting for node PCBs (I should get them in few days) and I hope to assembly nodes in two weeks. I’m also working on master node PCB design.

Node design
Each node is designed as electrical wall plug to which you can directly connect an electrical heater. It is also capable of measuring temperature and communicating with other nodes. Mesh network will communicate in 433,92 MHZ license free ISM band.

• ATmega32 microcontroller – node job control
  
• JTAG interface - development and debugging
  
• Chipcon CC1000 radio module – communication
  
• I2C interface – for future development, it could be use to connect additional hardware to node and by this to entire mesh network
  
• DS18S20 – temperature measurement
  
• RM85 16 Amp Relay – heater (or any electrical device) control
  

Master node design
A master node is hardware layer between Efika and Mesh network. It is currently in design phase.

• ATmega128 microcontroller – node job control
  
• JTAG interface - development and debugging
  
• Chipcon CC1000 radio module – communication
  
• I2C interface – for future development
  
• Two RS232 ports – one of cellular phone, one for Efika
  
• LCD – simple user iterface
  

Efika as master node computer
Efika will be a master node computer running Ubuntu Linux. It will be connected to the mesh network by master node thru RS232 interface. The main job of Efika will be the network control, monitoring and logging. It will be used to gather and analyze information about network. Efika will provide a web based interface for network monitoring and control i.e. setting node state, temperature monitoring, network usage and state monitoring.