Introduction

Hello, we are team 5!  We implemented the aLife system, a home automation system with a twist.  We change the already existing market for home automation and make it an event driven system, giving the user fuller control and a friendlier experience than they get with most systems on the market these days.  With our custom hardware we are able to add functionality that most people would consider necessary for everyday life, and we added the flexibility for the users to be able to fit the devices to their needs if they wanted a custom service.

Project Purpose


Peoples lives are increasingly complicated, especially in managing their homes.  You have to remember the shopping list, when to take the kids to soccer practice, whether you locked the front door, if the garage door is closed, when the dog needs more water, to turn off the lights when you're not using them, turn the coffee pot off, keep the AC at the correct temp, and a multitude of other things that eventually lead to some degree of information overload and stress.  All of this division of our attention leads to inefficient use of time spent on home management.  While there are devices that can increase our standard of living and give us more ways to be lazy (clap on lights), what is far more useful is a way to make managing our lives more efficient, with respect to time, electrical energy, and mental energy.  Our aLife (Advanced Living Integration For Efficiency) "one stop shop" system of monitoring and control of all of the devices (and even some non electronics) in your home through a non intrusive and easy to use UI that only presents information to you when pertinent.

Documentation and Code


Project General

Base Station

Wireless Sense and Control Modules

Remote Client



Team Members

Amos Kittelson

Amos
Amos Kittelson is will achieve a bachelors degree late 2011, majoring in Computer Engineering and minoring in International Engineering. Early 2011 he will be fullfilling the international portion of his degree in the UK. He is a 12 year Air Force veteran and a member of the Florida Air National Guard.

Jake Peery

Jake is a senior Electrical and Computer Engineering dual major who will complete his degree in December 2010. He has over two and a half years experience as an embedded systems engineer designing security products for the military. After graduation he looks forward to continuing work in the defense industry and plans on earning a private pilot certification in his spare time.



Tim Tewolde


Temesgen (Tim) Tewolde will be graduating in December 2010 with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineer from the University of Central Florida. After graduation he plans to join the workforce and has already accepted a position as a Software Engineer with his current employer.

Todd Denton


Todd will be graduating in December '10 with a Bach. in Computer Engineering. After gruaduation, he plans on reapplying to UCF for a master's program in Artificial Intelligence and Machine learing, and it currently looking into a job involving search engine optimization and website development.




Thank You Sponsors!!

The aLife team would very much like to thank the following project sponsors, without their generous support this project would not have been possible:

Chuck Perkinson and Infrasafe Inc for loaning us the I.MX51EVKJ demo board for free which we used as our Android base station.

www.infrasafe.com

Chris Westervelt for donating countless late night hours helping us with the board layout, and I.MX51EVKJ configuration and troubleshooting.


Travis Woodruff and Advanced Circuits for giving us a significant student discount on the PCBs, as well as finishing the boards ahead of schedule.

www.4PCB.com


Randy Highsmith and Solutions Manufacturing Inc for placing and soldering our tricky LGA-71 package MCUs for free. They did a great job and the MCUs worked perfectly!

http://www.solutionsmfg.com/

 
Thank you everyone!!