Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

The Internet Power Line Adapter

Quenten Alick

Abstract:
Automation systems have been around for many years making light work of tasks that are considered too menial or dangerous for humans to perform. Recently there has been a trend towards the development of home automation systems that will automate many of our tasks around the home, making them easier to perform and providing humans more time to be creative. However, for a home automation system to function, different devices must be able to communicate with each other.

This thesis aims to show that the home's power lines are suitable for use as a communications medium for home automation systems. To show this, a power adapter was designed that would be able to monitor the power consumption of various devices around the home and let a user monitor it using a web page interface.

Overall this thesis was successful in demonstrating that the power lines are a suitable medium for communications within a home automation system despite there being some problems with the measurement of power. Several improvements to the design have also been suggested.

Complete thesis:
thesis.pdf

Conference Paper:
conference_paper.pdf

Additional material:
code   schem    pcb    images

About the Author


Dept of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering     last mod 15/10/99