Smart Display

Student: William Tunganekore O'Neill

Supervisor: Dr. Mark Schulz

Category: Computer Systems Engineering Thesis Project

As microprocessors and digital circuits become smaller, cheaper and easier to produce, their integration into various electrical appliances and devices, from VCRs to fridges, is becoming more prevalent and accepted. Through this acceptance, and as a result of the rapid advances in technology, appliances are developing into intelligent systems which are capable of hiding their complexity, providing simpler interfaces to the user while allowing for more advanced functions. The term ‘smart’ would be used to describe such devices. This thesis looks in to a concept for a new smart product, a mobile display device called a “Smart Display”.

The problem which the Smart Display project sets out to solve, is to make a passive display device which wirelessly connects to a LAN. As a terminal of this network, it should then have the ability to run applications which can show specific information about the network and its clients. Depending on how advanced the implementation of the Smart Display is, these applications could do anything from showing real-time video and sound, to presenting news updates which are current at the second they are displayed.

The solution discussed in this thesis involves using a handheld Palm Pilot as the display, and using a combination of infra-red and radio frequency transmission to produce the wireless network connection. To demonstrate the device’s functionality, a couple of applications will be used which will have the capability of updating the Palm Pilot’s display in real-time with some useful data. Based on the outcomes of these demonstrations, the Smart Display concept will be evaluated for its usefulness and its suitability in a computer-networked environment.

Poster Presentation (PDF)

Thesis Document (PDF)