What is happening right now?

Information on occupancy is significant in constructing intelligent buildings for smart and automated energy optimized for air-conditioning, ventilation, heating systems, and also smart lighting system. Therefore, countless experimentation are being done in order to supply automatic solutions for managing energy usage by syncing the information on occupancy to the control system [1]. By controlling the load applied to the system, a significant total of energy can be conserved. However, occupant sensing is still a highly-cost and complicated system [2]. It is still overflowed with problems such as easily intruded sensors that will cause false detection and constrained by a limited energy supply when powered by batteries [3].

Passive Infrared (PIR) sensor, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag, ultrasonic sensor and microwave sensor are the most typical devices used for occupant sensing [4]. PIR sensors measure infrared (IR) light radiating from objects, which enable users to detect movement, that is why it is always used to detect whether an occupant has moved within the range of the sensor [5]. Next, radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has been used to read and capture information stored on a tag attached to the occupant.

Each time an occupant passes through the system, it will calculate and recognize occupants in real-time precisely [6]. Lastly, ultrasonic and microwave sensor emit sound waves and microwaves, respectively and detect occupancy by analyzing the frequency of the received waves [7].

What is the problem?

Nowadays, most of the occupant sensing system uses PIR motion sensor because it is cheap and readily available. It is very good at detecting moving objects. But there are some cases which they cannot detect the users’ presence if they sit still or not moving at all, for instance, sleeping [8]. It might cause discomfort to the users when the lighting system suddenly turned off even though the users is still in the range of the sensor. Not to mention, most of ready-made sensors are powered by batteries, which can affect the sensor’s performance as the batteries going low in power [9].

Most of the time, users tend to buy the current conventional system because it is easy to install in a room. However, problems occurred when they’re trying to install throughout the whole house where they need to deploy lots of sensors to extend the sensing range. In some cases, they need to install several sensors just for the entrance of the house, not including windows and other doors inside of the house [10].

Right now, the problem is the current occupant sensing system is not really optimized so that the energy usage data acquisition and analysis can be done and shown to the users for monitoring purpose [11]. Even though the current system can control the electrical appliances automatically, it still has some disadvantages and lacks some element that involves the activity of the users towards the system [12].

What am I going to do?

Thus, I am going to invent an affordable electric potential sensor that can be used for non-intrusive occupant sensing for energy smart monitoring system. The developed sensor is made up of a signal antenna creating the head of the sensor, amplifying signal, and signal filtration. It detects the displacement current between the antenna and human.

The sensor’s head is a flat antenna with a thin rectangular flat, black surface. The sensor utilizes the transimpedance amplifier (TIA), a current-to-voltage converter, to amplify the current output and converts it into the voltage output. For the rest of the control system, an Arduino Nano V3.0, an Espresso Lite V2.0, a current sensor, a dual channel relay, and a USB-UART converter are being used to control the electricity passing through the system.

Furthermore, the results recorded indicate the amazing capability of the sensor in computing the equivalent signals of the human’s heart at distance up to 120 cm with no obstacle in between. In conclusion, the sensor is proven can be an alternative to the typically used sensor to detect moving and static occupants in the human sensing system.

The figure above shows the experimental setup of control system and the presence sensor installed within.

Shown in the above table is the readings in mV of recorded signals of single subject at various distance.

Shown in the above table is the readings in mV of recorded signals at fixed distance with various numbers of subjects present in the room.

Shown in the above table is the readings in Ampere of recorded current with various conditions of load.

Whom did I refer to?

Well you can refer to any of the list down here for more information. Goodluck!

[1]  A. E. Mahdi, L. Faggion, “New displacement current sensor for contactless detection of bio-activity related signals,” in Sensors and Actuators A: Physical. Elsevier, 2015, pp. 176-183.

[2]  E. Arens, C. Federspiel, D. Wang, and C. Huizenga, “How ambient intelligence will improve habitability and energy efficiency in buildings,” in Ambient intelligence. Springer, 2005, pp. 63–80.

[3]  J. Lu, T. Sookoor, V. Srinivasan, G. Gao, B. Holben, J. Stankovic, E. Field, and K. Whitehouse, “The smart thermostat: using occupancy sensors to save energy in homes,” in Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. ACM, 2010, pp. 211–224.

[4]  J. Scott, A. Bernheim Brush, J. Krumm, B. Meyers, M. Hazas, S. Hodges, and N. Villar, “Preheat: controlling home heating using occupancy prediction,” in Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing. ACM, 2011, pp. 281–290.

[5]  L. P´erez-Lombard, J. Ortiz, and C. Pout, “A review on buildings energy consumption information,” Energy and buildings, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 394–398, 2008.

[6]  M. Gupta, S. S. Intille, and K. Larson, “Adding gps-control to traditional thermostats: An exploration of potential energy savings and design challenges,” in Pervasive Computing. Springer, 2009, pp. 95–114.

[7]  M. Moghavvemi and L. C. Seng, “Pyroelectric infrared sensor for intruder detection,” in TENCON 2004. 2004 IEEE Region 10 Conference, vol. 500. IEEE, 2004, pp. 656–659.

[8] M. Nati, A. Gluhak, H. Abangar, and W. Headley, “Smartcampus: A user-centric testbed for internet of things experimentation,” in Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications (WPMC), 2013 16th International Symposium on. IEEE, 2013, pp. 1–6.

[9]  N. Murtagh, M. Nati, W. R. Headley, B. Gatersleben, A. Gluhak, M. A. Imran, and D. Uzzell, “Individual energy use and feedback in an office setting: A field trial,” Energy Policy, vol. 62, pp. 717–728, 2013.

[10]  T. A. Nguyen and M. Aiello, “Energy intelligent buildings based on user activity: A survey,” Energy and buildings, vol. 56, pp. 244–257, 2013.

[11]  W. Kleiminger, C. Beckel, and S. Santini, “Opportunistic sensing for efficient energy usage in private households,” in Proceedings of the Smart Energy Strategies Conference, vol. 2011, 2011.

[12]  W. Kleiminger, C. Beckel, T. Staake, and S. Santini, “Occupancy detection from electricity consumption data,” in Proceedings of the 5^th ACM Workshop on Embedded Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, 2013, pp. 1–8.

[13]  X. Guo, D. Tiller, G. Henze, and C. Waters, “The performance of occupancy-based lighting control systems: A review,” Lighting Research and Technology, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 415–431, 2010.

[14]  Y. Agarwal, B. Balaji, R. Gupta, J. Lyles, M. Wei, and T. Weng, “Occupancy-driven energy management for smart building automation,” in Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Workshop on Embedded Sensing Systems for Energy-Efficiency in Building. ACM, 2010, pp. 1–6.

Who is the main person here?

Ir. Juraimi Masood (white shirt & blue tie).

• General Manager Development Office Port of Tanjung Pelepas, Johor, Malaysia.
• Head of Development Department responsible for the planning, construction, test and deliver of the various packages within the Port development plan.
• Specialist in Electrical System Concept and Design and have possession of 132kV Competency Certificate from the Energy Commission and currently handling the 132kV system within the port.
• Studied Electrical Engineering at UTM & University of Hartford.

What is the talk all about?

On April 17, 2018, I had attended and Industrial Seminar held at L50, UTM. Professional Journey as an Engineer was the topic of the day. He came to briefly explain to the students (especially the final year students) about his personal experiences, his career journey, and also the obstacles when we wanted to be an engineer in the future.

He mentioned that he had been involved in the heavy engineering industry since 1991 until present days. He first became an Electrical and Instrumentation Engineer under Sime Darby Engineering Sdn Bhd starting from 1991 until 1996. Then, he worked as a Principal Engineer under KTA Tenaga SB from 1996 until 1997. The latest post is the General Manager at Pelabuhan Tanjung Pelepas, Johor.

He explained that his work involved designing, project planning, project costing, construction, quality, and the most important aspect, safety. Safety should be the top priority regarding what happened in the field. Now, he is responsible for managing stakeholder and the development plan. Back then, he only dealt with the equipment and stuff only. But now, he needs to deal with the end users, communities, authorities, and also the consultant company.

Besides, he told us that the most important thing for all the fresh graduates to do is always believe that sky is the limit in whatever they are doing in the future. Do not stop improving and keep moving although there are, for sure, lots of obstructions ahead of us. Even though we are really good at technical skills, never forget the soft skills that are really important for us to communicate with the other people later on.

Lastly, he said that all of the success can be achieved by following the ethics of an engineer. If the engineer does not follow the code of ethics, fatality and disasters might happen, or even death. Therefore, engineers must be careful when designing something that is going to be used by the public.

.Some General Info.

Floods are a common occurrence in our country Malaysia. Due to our geographic infrastructure it is a problem that cannot be avoided fully. Thus a solution of a system designed using PLC and SCADA is proposed to serve as an early warning system and for monitoring purpose. The current water flood disaster almost hit people by surprise which means that there are least chances of saving personal belongings thus resulting in massive losses.

The problem with the current method of warning system is that it doesn’t actually apply measurement to the water level. The warning simply comes from weather forecast that predicts heavy rain. Since the warning is sometimes inaccurate it is troublesome for people to move their stuff.

With the current advancement of technology, it is inevitable that the implementation of a better system seems logical. Internet of Things (IoT) has become more and more popular as internet nowadays are more easily accessible by most people. The proliferation of a wide variety of Internet-connected and low-cost devices is leading to the intensive worldwide use of the Internet of Things (IoT) [1]. The mobility of use and freedom to control the device from anywhere (as long as there is internet connections) makes it all the more tempting.

.Main Purpose.

• To solve problems of early detection in flood disasters
• To design an early warning and monitoring system using Arduino based microcontroller.

.The Real Thing.

After the system had been fully developed, test and run the system had been doing to obtain the desired results. Despite that, this project only been developed the conceptual based on real system working principle to represent how the system function and operate in real situation. This illustrated figure below shows the conceptual design of water level flood warning system. The funnel and hose in the figure demonstrate how the water level in the river or lake may be raise with flow of water inside the container. 

Ultrasonic sensor as shown below had been used to detect the water level since its common application to detect distance an object from the sensor being attached. According to its datasheet, this sensor can measure distance from 2cm until 4m within 3mm accuracy, suitable to apply in this project. This sensor consists of two pins which are trigger input and echo output. In addition, those pins would only require normal I/O ports.

In order to control and monitor the sensor reading of the water level from anywhere and anytime, a system that have connection with internet must be create. The next figure that shows ESPresso Lite V2.0 had been chose as the microcontroller since it is a Wi-Fi module that contains several breakout pin of Global Peripheral Input Output (GPIO), very suitable and reliable to be apply in this system.

Since this system require additional features with monitoring and warning system, a continuous visualization for monitoring for the user should be create. The Blynk apps for android smart phone had been used for monitoring and warning purposes. This apps commonly been used cause it provides interface for any Iot application either to control or monitor by using mobile phone. It also have many friendly interesting interface and easily to manage according to the system designer desire. The following figures show examples of interface the Blynk apps that been applied in some project.

The interface of the Blynk apps. (Low level of water)

The interface of the Blynk apps. (Medium level of water)

The interface of the Blynk apps. (High level of water)