Project Advising: Security System

This is your wiki page that you can edit and will serve as a method of communication between us. Every week, you should add a quick status of what work got accomplished, and share any problem(s) you may encounter.

This Week's Tasks

• Set up development environment
• Get base station accessible over TCP/IP
• Confirm abstract and acquire signature

Status

Roadblocks & Problems

• None so far

Next Goals

• Setup Development Environment
• Get base-station accessible over TCP/IP

Long term Goals

• Start designing PCB for sensor node

Due Dates

September 16

• Submit Abstract with electronic Signature from Advisor
• Present project to the class

September 13

• [COMPLETED] Finish and submit Abstract

Abstract (Draft)

The home security systems have been in the existence for more than two decades, but most of the people have really outdated security systems. There are two main reasons which are deterring them from upgrading their home security systems and they are cost of new alarm system and the installation fee. Lot of companies also offer security systems for which they charge their customers on monthly basis, but majority of people don’t like that idea. Now the technology has improved so much that we are capable of controlling our security systems from anywhere using our laptop, tablet or even our phones. There is a huge demand for a affordable and state of the art security system which could be installed easily.

The objective of our project is to develop a low powered security system which can be turned on off via a wireless device. The security system will comprise of mostly motion sensors and contact sensors with one base station that will communicate with the controllers. If the system detects any abnormal activity, it will send out an alert to the user through an e-mail.

Most companies that sell security systems to businesses and households use wired communication in their systems to make them run. Although some companies are currently working on security systems that can communicate with the sensors wirelessly, but there has not been any security system that can alert the users that their security system has been triggered. There have been some instances that the user would get notified by a call from the company if their security system has been triggered, but we believe that it takes awhile for this kind of communication to be established. We want the user of the security system to be notified immediately so that they can do the proper action when the alarm is triggered. Therefore, email notifications are a great way for users to be notified. In the industry today, there aren’t as much security systems that can notify the user about their security system being triggered while they are away. We believe that this security system that we are planning to make will be very useful to businesses and households out there. Industries will look at this kind of security system as a more reliable system than others and will use this model for their business to strive. The academic values for this project consist of what we have learned about microcontrollers and wireless communications and apply it to this project to make a working security system that will benefit everyone who needs security in their buildings. Not only will this project have an idea for everyone, but it will benefit us as well. We will get to learn new things about wireless communication and micro-controllers that we have not learned and we can apply these skills into our jobs that we will apply for after graduation. We believe that this project is going to be a very big learning curve for us and it can help our society in a big way.

Requirements

From Preet:
I've added a requirement section for you guys. We will go with LPC1758-based base-station and add Wifi interface to be able to access it over TCP/IP by using a simple command/response system. Let's setup a "workshop" day so I can train you guys about the development environment. Our next goal will be getting the base-station bare-metal system up and running, and add wifi to it.

Base Station

• Base station shall be able to communicate with each sensor node out-of-the-box
• Base station shall buffer all data from all remote sensor nodes
• Base station shall communicate over TCP/IP to provide access to its interface

Sensor Nodes

• Each sensor node shall operate from a small battery such as CR123
• Each node shall last more than one year on a single battery
• Each sensor node shall wake up periodically and send sensor data
• At minimum, there shall be motion, and door sensor

Mobile Application

• The application shall allow to arm or disarm the security system
• The application shall show events with timestamps when the system was triggered, armed, or disarmed.