Fourth Year CPE Capstone Project at the University of Virginia
As university students, we all have busy schedules that balance a mix of classes, school work, and extracurriculars. We have busy days of running between classes, meetings, group projects, and libraries. Many of us live in group apartments or houses and are in and out of our homes several times a day. We also may only see our roommates when we leave in the morning, and when we get home at night. It can be difficult to keep track of roommates schedules, and when your home is occupied or not. It is easy to leave the house unsecured, or to lock out a roommate who did not take their key. A wireless and Internet connected home monitoring and control system would appeal to college students who want control of their home while away from home.
We want to develop a wireless sensor network for home monitoring and control. We want to use the MSP430 computing platform as a central node to interface over a home wireless network with several internet connected devices. We want to use the Electric Imp imp001 for our internet connectivity challenges. Considering the relatively short time frame for the project, we want to focus on fully implementing one aspect of our WSN, wireless door unlocking. The MSP430 will network with a motion sensor to monitor the front-door traffic, and an actuator to lock or unlock the door, using the home WIFI network. The system will be accessible using a secure web application. For the sake of simplicity, we will be prototyping our project for a specific model of deadbolt door.
This project could make a solid Kickstarter campaign. While there are many home monitoring solutions, many are marketed by large security companies and include many features that would not be of interest to college students. Therefore, we want to market our product as the home monitoring and control system that is affordable and useful to college students and recent graduates.
This project is a good candidate for a CpE capstone project. The project is complex, but manageable in the given time frame. The project also integrates hardware and software concepts that will make it a well rounded Computer Engineering project. Interfacing the MSP430 with the imp001 will be a challenging task, and the web application and user interface will round off the product as something that is marketable and easy to use.