10.1.1.98.1962

Monitoring, Controlling and Configuring a Wireless Household-Electric Network through LabVIEW Remote Virtual Interface. Antonio Heronaldo de Sousa, Rafael Campos do Prado, Felipe Cubas Schulz Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brazil E-mails: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract The objective of this work is to demonstrate the operation of a system that allows monitoring, controlling and configuring a wireless household-electric network using a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) as the user interface. Initially, the wireless communication was established by Bluetooth. In the next step, the hardware and firmware of the appliance will be modified in order to implement a ZigBee protocol. LabVIE W has been used to develop the user interface in the PDA. I. INTRODUCTION According to CEA-HNIT (Consumer Electronics Association - Home Networking and Information Technology) a domestic net interconnects electronic products and systems, allowing the remote access and the control of those products and systems, and any available content as music, video or data [1]. The key features of this definition are the connection, access, and control. That is, the products need to be connected one to another, having access to content such as information and service. The user must have control over devices, distribution of contents and in formation flow inside or remotely in some place out of the house [1]. At the beginning, in order to make these differentials available in the household-electrics, we can imagine that will occur a significant increase in the production cost, because of the inclusion of interfaces based on liquid crystal displays with good graphical resolution becomes necessary, as well as advanced data entrance and network communication resources wireless or not on its construction. However, a more critical analysis an alternative that seen to be viable: the use of the same computational platform, to incorporate the necessary elements to implement the user interface with all the residence white line household-electric, to increase security, functionality and reduction of costs. This platform can be well represented by a PDA, or by a cellular phone, which is becoming more popular. A PDA, for example, presents the computational resources necessary to implement a friendly and flexible user interface. It makes use of wireless communication resources (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Infra-Red), serial communication, memory for data storage, traditional data input devices (keyboard) and more elaborated, such as sensible touch screens. Its use enables a reduction of the final cost of the household-electric by the elimination (partial or total) of components, boards and interconnection wires used in a classic user interface. In this case the PDA software will be the user interface and the wire connection could be substituted by wireless interfaces. II. MOTIVATION Reference [7] says that there have been several attempts to network the home environments through proprietary and standards solutions. The approaches to achieve this goal are classified in two groups: wired and wireless networks. Each one offers several advantages and disadvantages that depend on bandwidth capacity, installation, maintenance, and costs, among others. A key motivation for use of wireless technology is the reduction in installation cost, since new wiring is not needed. Also, wireless network transmits information with minimal installation effort. Consequently it has reduced maintenance costs. Bluetooth has been chosen as the wireless protocol in this project in order to substitute connection wires. This is a widespread protocol used in a large range of devices. At the beginning, the main goal was checking the usability of the wireless network without worry about the network performance. After that, the network performance must be improved to reach some specifications such as low power consumption, low complexity, low data rate, and high reliability. ZigBee protocol incorporates all these specifications [4]. A PDA has been chosen as the user interface because it presents the necessary computing resources to implement a friendly and flexible interface. It makes use of wireless communication resources (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Infra-Red), serial communication, memory for data storage, traditional data input devices (keyboard) and more elaborated, as sensible touch screens. III. IMPLEMENTATION In this work, it was considered only the communication between a washing machine and a PDA. 32nd IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks 0742-1303/07 $25.00 © 2007 IEEE DOI 10.1109/LCN.2007.5 9 256

10.1.1.98.1962

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