AECT 2015 - Home Automation and Smarter Grid

As smart grid is a topic of interest to me, I wanted to participate in AECT 2015 conference. I thought that building a home automation system can help in facilitating smart-grid by offering granular control of electrical devices.

To form a home automation system, I knew a multi-disciplinary team will be required. I formed a team with my class mates and room mates in previous years, Rahael (from Computer Science) and Swetha (Electronics). I made an abstract and showed it to them. The abstract was slightly modified and submitted.

We were a tensed if the abstract will be accepted and when we got the mail that it was accepted, great was the joy but greater was then tension. Now we need to translate the theory to practice and demonstrate a proof of concept of the architecture that was proposed. Rahael started to build the interface between the desktop (HAS Server) and the Raspberry Pi. I build the interface from Pi and also the DTMF interface. Swetha helped with her profound knowledge of electronics. 

At the D-Day we gave a presentation and a demo. The judges were from IIT Delhi and NIt Suratkal. 

Later was absolutely thrilled to learn that our paper stood second. The cash prize of Rs.3000/- made it heavenly.

Summer Training in IIT Kharagpur

Summer holidays were approaching and I got busy trying to find an internship. Last year, I had done my summer training in TATA STEEL and had enjoyed every bit of it. So I was looking forward to this year with much enthusiasm. While searching for internships and discussing about it with my friends, I realized that most of them had applied for foreign internships via IAESTE Student Chapter, Manipal. 

The concept of going for a paid foreign internship interested me and I began the tedious task of going through the list of internships available and filling out details and writing a CV for each of them. An internship in Germany had caught my interest and I really began craving for it. Along with that, I had also applied in Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. After doing an industrial training last year, I figured that it would be great if I could do a project in an academic institute.

While I did not get the internship in Germany (it went to my senior, a student who completed 3rd year and will move to 4th year), I soon got an acceptance mail from IIT-KGP. Delighted, I made preparations for my departure. On reaching, I was given the task to code the Load Flow Analysis by Gauss-Seidel Method under Prof. Pabitra Mitra, Dept of Computer Science. I got accommodation in Gokhale Hall (well it was a PG hostel but now is a girls hostel).

To be honest, I was very scared in the beginning. I had not taken up computer as a subject in school since class 8 and hardly knew all the syntax in C++. My computer knowledge was limited to the elementary course we had in first year. In addition the the topic I was given was yet to be taught to me in third year. So for the first couple of weeks, I spent time understanding the concepts of load flow and finding all the library functions and syntax I required for the program. After a good 8 weeks of coding and testing with different bus systems, I finally completed the project and submitted my report. 

I was delighted when it was accepted and I was given my certificate with the prestigious IIT stamp on it.

Dance

Dance is something I am passionate about. I got introduced to dance when I moved to Calcutta from USA. I learned Odissi from Ramdhenu Kala Kunj of Padma Vibushan Kelucharan Mohapatra Gharana.

I have danced at various functions at our apartment complex and school functions. In addition I have also performed in MIT at various functions and have been selected to represent my college in the cultural fest.

The certificates of my formal dance education can be seen here.

Below are links of to some of my performance at various locations.

1. Saveri Pallavi: In this dance item I tried to communicate through eye movements, body postures & intricate footwork. The dance starts with slow, graceful & lyrical movements of the eyes, neck, torso & feet & slowly blossoms in a crescendo to climax in a fast tempo at the end
2. I participated in a short (2+min) movie made by my father where I was the narrator explaining the social impact of Durga Pujo.

.

Summer Training at TATA STEEL

Engineering students enjoy long summer vacations. I wanted to utilize part of the vacation to understand how things actually work at shop floor, see some motors and electrical machinery in stripped condition. Tata Steel is one of the largest integrated steel plant in India and I felt I can best learn from there.

I applied to Tata Steel and was told that all vocational training request need to formally come from Training and Placement division. My request to our T&P resulted to the formal letter from MIT's Training & Placement Department to Tata Steel requesting industrial training for me. 

Soon my request was granted and the mail from Tata Steel asked me to visit then on 3rd June.

I was excited. My father continuously harped on the importance of industrial safety. Soon I had my PPE (personal protective equipment) i.e. helmet and safety shoes and goggles ready. With them I transformed from a bookish college student to a macho engineer :)

I was placed under the mentorship of Mr. Arvind Sinha who heads Transmission and Distribution of electrical power in Tata Steel (actually in the city of Jamshedpur as Tata Steel is the authorized electricity provider for the city). He drew out a calendar for me, gave me contact people names in various departments and asked me to learn and report to him every week on the progress. I visited electrical motor repair shop, electrical testing section, power house, Load Dispatch Center. I learned not only about technology, but also on work-flow process and the organization hierarchy and roles and responsibility. These process insights on how a plant allocates work and ensures quality has been my biggest takeaway from Tata Steel.

At the end of my two weeks of training, I had to submit a project report. As a novice engineer (I just completed my first year and have not even started my departmental subjects), I wrote what I saw and what I learned. It was a joyous moment when I learned that my TATA STEEL Summer Training Project Report have been accepted.

A few weeks later I was given a certificate of successful completion of training.

I am grateful to my aunt for her hospitality and hosting me during my stay in Jamshedpur.

MIT, Manipal

Its been about a year since my last post.

2012 went by in a flutter of activities. I guess it is same for any Class XII student - Board Exam, many entrance exams followed by intense suspense on how career will shape up, choosing an university and a subject, settling to hostel life & mess food, making the long commutes to home alone (well not exactly alone as one is surrounded by fellow college buddies), vacations too short to finish all the home-made foods, new people & new ideas and new thoughts.

Post my ISC exam, I gave engineering entrance exams. Then I had to make "life-changing" decision of University-Department combination. I wanted to do Electrical engineering and I choose Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT, Manipal). My choice was based on feedback from seniors and family friends who are faculty, placement & higher scholarship figures and age of the college.

Though it is first time I am staying in a hostel, I readily integrated to hostel life & food. We have all sorts of personalities here and it is fun to be with different type of people. My college notes are in high demand  & one day I was surprised to see my notes being sold from Om Xerox (a xerox shop in the campus). When I told them that this is my notes, they offered me a deal to publish my notes. Humm... At least I am on road-map to have my publications read.

I am somewhat active in campus activities. I am part of sponsorship team of Revels - a cultural event of MIT. I also helped Institute of Engineers, MIT Chapter get sponsorship of technical contest from IBM University Relation.

Ecstasy & Agony

My project has been shortlisted for KVPY final interview. I was overjoyed. Doing research & teaching is my goal and hence KVPY interested me.

However my joy turned to agony when I realized that that interview date (28th Feb) falls between my two board exam date (27th Feb & 29th Feb). Interview location is Bangalore and traveling from Kolkata a day before my board exam is risky. In addition our board exam was rescheduled from 28th to 27th due to an All-India Industrial strike. If for any chance my travel is disrupted, my career will be jeopardized.

I called Prof. Chandrasekaran, the convener of the program requesting change of date. I was a bit apprehensive directly calling such a renowned person, but my desire to attend KVPY interview was great. Sir gave me a patient and gentle hearing. He explained the difficulty in getting the date changed (interviewers are coming from various locations including abroad) & also why video-conf call interview from a Kolkata based University is not feasible. He said that there will be a committee meeting to discuss the issue on Monday (6th Feb) and final decision will be taken there. I called on Monday and understood that the date can't be changed, however support will be given to have my interview taken at any time on 27-29 Feb.

The last few days have been painful. Though my father is ready to book multiple flights (so that even if one is canceled, there is another one), I feel that board exam is of priority. The risk of traveling to Bangalore is too high. With deep agony, I decided that I will not attend the interview.

My science and maths teachers are appalled with my decision. They have groomed me for many years and failing my teachers wish was hard.

Hope my decision augurs well in my career.

Prediction of Traffic Flow by Sonic Analysis of Road Surface Vibration

For my KVPY Project I chose a topic that I found interesting (to me) and also I think will add value.

We all have experienced traffic congestion. It is quite painful. In addition it causes loss of scarce resources like fuel and manpower. A study shows that India Metros are high in Commuter Pain Index. Hence a model to ease congestion will help the nation.

Project Report

Final Project Report can be found in Google Docs (PDF File).
NOTE: Links in the project report refer to the old URL i.e. http://kvpy-rohini.blogspot.in/. This need to be changed to http://rohini-banerjee.blogspot.in/.  I wanted to keep the report as it was submitted.

Background

Often in a traffic jam, I see my father take a diversion and commute via secondary roads. Sometimes esp in heavy traffic (generally caused by accidents) I have seen that the police divert traffic from main road to a secondary road.

Once while stuck on top of a bridge (near Science City, Kolkata traffic signal),I felt my car sway when the buses at opposite lane were moving. I found it quite interesting that traffic can cause enough vibration to make a car move. As a class IX student being introduced to resonance - I thought it was due to the bridge going in resonance. (I soon understood how wrong I was, when my father showed me a video of a bridge collapsing due to resonance).

About two years ago, my father was talking about a speech he heard (from senior researcher Dr. Manish Gupta's) on Smarter Planet. There have been various attempts to measure the traffic flow like measuring the change of frequency of a horn of moving vehicle (Doppler Effect) and shifting-pattern of cell phone tower usage.

Now that I am class XII and preparing for B.Sc. in IISc., I consolidated these experiences in my project and tried to make a small prototype of a Traffic Flow Sensor by analysis Road Surface Vibration.

Project Execution
When selecting the project for KVPY - a number of ideas came in my mind. I approached a neighbor Mrs. Manidipa Roy. {Manidipa Masi (Aunty = Masi in Bengali) is working on her PhD. I am impressed that a person well settled in life (she is the principal of a polytechnic school) and so senior in age still has the enthusiasm to do a PhD. I want to be a PhD in my life, the first in my family to achieve the degree}. After discussion with her and my father I selected the topic. I was quite excited about the topic.

After about a week or two, I managed to get my father come along with me and guard me while I do my "experiment". It was fun to see a crowd come along and see me digging a small hole. When I started measuring the sound and started adjusting the record volume sensitivity, many thought that I am trying to measure cell phone signal in ground and started giving me advice. It was fun to explain to common people (road side tea stall owner & customers, passer-by) what I was trying to do. Later they started explaining my work to others with their own "add-ons" that made the story interesting (one person even told another that I was putting a device that will listen to all his cell phone conversation).

Anyway to cut the long story short, I enjoyed very much working on the project. Later at evening when I listened to the recording, I was amazed to find that the sound of train was also recorded. The railway line is about 1.2 km away. I really understood what my teachers were saying when they mentioned that sound travels better and faster is solids than in gas.

The recording of sound vibration on day-1 is available as given below

• Complete original recording of the vibration -11.9 MB
• Part of the vibration recording from original during Slow Moving Traffic - 172.4 KB
• Part of the vibration recording from original during Fast Moving Traffic - 174.9 KB
• All recordings can be viewed at http://www.esnips.com/web/KVYP-Rohini

While recording the sound, I was also making a note at my diary on the time (at the recorder) and the traffic flow. This helped me to match the recorded sound with the actual traffic flow. I also ensured that the recorder level is maintained at same level for each type of microphone.

While I could easily "see" a co-relation of the wave (as displayed in Audacity) with traffic flow, it is important to analyze it to determine its distinguishing parameters. 

My guide told me that she can help by having it analyzed with MATLAB in her machine. However we were not sure on how to import MP3 files in MATLAB for analysis. I stumbled on an excellent article Wave File Analysis from Worcester Polytechnic Institute that gave a step by step approach of analysis of a MP3 file.

With the help of the above site - I made the following scripts and went with that to my guide to get MATLAB analysis done.


The MATLAB analysis of slow moving traffic (code and result)

    [wave,fs]=wavread('c:\MATLAB6p5\work\A0802ST.wav');
    %sound(wave,fs);
    %t=0:1/fs:(length(wave)-1)/fs;
    %plot(t,wave);
    n=length(wave)-1;
    f=0:fs/n:fs;
    wavefft=abs(fft(wave));
    figure(1);
    plot(f,wavefft);
    title('A0802ST - Day-1 Slow Traffic; Start time = 08:02');

The MATLAB analysis of fast moving traffic (code and result)

    [wave,fs]=wavread('c:\MATLAB6p5\work\A08135FT.wav');
    %sound(wave,fs);
    t=0:1/fs:(length(wave)-1)/fs;
    plot(t,wave);
    n=length(wave)-1;
    f=0:fs/n:fs;
    wavefft=abs(fft(wave));
    figure(2);
    plot(f,wavefft);
    title('A08135FT - Day-1 Fast Traffic; Start time = 08:13.5');

The MATLAB analysis shows that the mean of the fast moving traffic wave is about double that of slow moving traffic wave. This is a reflection of the energy in the system when vehicles move fast.

Note:

1. My guide & me were surprised to see two waves coming in MATLAB (You may notice a greenish and a bluish line in the analysis result given above). On investigation I found that I had set Audacity to record in stereo mode and hence the two waves. Only one is taken for analysis.
2. I now have very elementary skill in MATLAB - I was helped in MATLAB by my guide.

Limitation of the Method
The major limitation of the method is the noise captured. The microphone records horns, people talking and even faraway traffic noise (ex. traffic moving in other direction).

For the method to be deployed in real-life, it is necessary to filter out the noise. An approach can be to place the microphone deep inside (I made a hold a few inches deep). However I am skeptical that this will resolve the problem. The reason for this is that we have seen sound of train moving more than a km has got recorded.

I feel that we can capture the signal generated from a piezoelectric device. The device can be placed under the road and when vehicles press it, it will generate an electrical pulse. Frequency of the pulse will enable us to estimate the traffic flow.

What Next

For the method to be commercially viable, we need to develop small instruments that can capture the signal, analyze it and communicate the result to a central computer where city traffic planning can be done.

Traffic Control Room @ Kolkata (Feb 2011)

Tokyo Traffic Control Center (2007)

Developed countries have high-tech sensors and infrastructure (In Singapore, controllers receive real-time data through sensors to model and predict traffic scenarios with 90% accuracy. - source IBM).

As the above two photographs depict, we do not have the same luxury. We need to find a simple cost effective solution based on radically different approach. I think my project is innovative and hope that my project will induce innovation to solve this problem in India.

My First Science Project

As my father used to work in USA, my early education (till Class I) was in Challenger School. The two things that I remember during this period are:

• In kindergarten, I had set-up a stall selling lemonade. I got the idea from a friend, drew posters (it showed a person beating the Sun and had the words "BEAT THE HEAT"), asked my parents to make me two jugs of lemonade and sat in front of my house to sell it. When hardly anyone came, I went around and called all neighbors who became my customers. I earned some money that I used to buy some chocolates.
• We had a mandatory science exhibition from Class I. I discussed with my mother and we choose Static and Rolling Friction from the list as it involved minimum apparatus. I had no clue of friction and my parents explained it to me. I made the posters as per format given and presented the topic. This is my first science presentation. Thankfully my uncle recorded it and it is available in this YouTube Site.

 I did my Class II onwards from India and I remember that I had put in lot of effort to learn Hindi, History and Geography. However my teachers in Challenger had put in a solid foundation on English, Maths and Science and I could comfortably handle these subjects.

About Me

I am a girl engineer. I am told that there are about 15% of engineering students are girls. This makes me special

Due to nature of my father's work, I have traveled in many places around the world. The visits to these places has taught me to deal with diversity. I am comfortable in dealing with different ethnic groups and can easily work with people.

I plan to pursue a career in power systems and smart grid.

Some highlights of my work:

• Obtained 90%+ average in all exams so far (Class X, XII and all semester exams)
• My team paper on "Home Automation & Energy Management System for Smarter Grid" was judged 2nd in AECT 2015, got cash award of Rs. 3000/-
• Summer internship in IIT Kharagpur and training in TATA STEEL
• My paper on "Measurement of Traffic Flow by Sonic Analysis of Road Surface Vibration" was selected by KVPY
• Vice-chairperson in IE E&E Students' Chapter, Manipal
• Head-Girl in my school & winner of Satikanta Guha Memorial Prize with a cash award of Rs. 25,000/- as the Best All-Rounder Pupil (Senior Category) in my school.

---

My College

I am studying Electrical and Electronics Engineering at MIT, Manipal. I joined MIT in 2012. 

My B. Tech Marks

Sixth position in the department with CGPA being 9.38 (till 5th semester). My marksheets can be seen here. It is also tabulated below for easy reference.

Electrical and Electronics Engineering Semester 5	9.04	26
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Semester 4	9.12	25
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Semester 3	9.38	26
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Semester 2	9.92	25
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Semester 1	9.48	25
Cumulitative Weighted Grade Point Average		9.385

---

My Schooling

I graduated Class XII in 2012 from Garden High School, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. I scored 92.4% in ISC.

I also gave my ICSE from Garden High School in 2010 and have topped my class (considering all seven subjects in the exam) with 94.6% marks (best 5 including English).

I joined Garden High at class VI. Apart from being good in academics, I have also played a leading role in school activities. I have been the Class Monitor, Prefect, Senior Prefect, Vice-Captain, Captain & presently I am the Head Girl of the school. Head Girl and Head Boy are the highest student position in the school. 

I won the Best All Rounder Senior student from the school. The award carries a cash prize of Rs. 25,000/-

---

My Hobbies

My hobby is dancing, I have completed 3rd year certification in Rabindra Nritya and Odissi.

---

My Family

I was born at Tata Main Hospital, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. My father used to work at Tata Steel. A graduate of IIT Kharagpur, he was 3rd generation employee of Tata Steel. He still recollects his days of break-downs and shut-downs in electrical power generation and distribution from his Tata Steel days. Guess that is what drove me to choose Electrical and Engineering.

My mother is from Ranchi, Jharkhand. A tough lady, she gave her M. Sc. from NIT Jamshedpur at advanced stage of pregnancy. In fact I was born between her theory and practical papers. She jokes that during a M.Sc. theory paper I kicked her tummy hard when she was making a mistake and thus, thanks to me, she did not loose some marks.

I have a younger sister who studies at G.D. Birla. She wants to invent something and gets a bit disappointed when she reads about inventors. "Why did they have to be born before me" - she repeatedly asks.

I Start Blogging

Today is an exciting day as I have started my first blog. This is to publish the result of my project that I have done for KVPY - SP Stream.