Sunday, 29 March 2015

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.