Working Demo Video

Demonstration of the office automator system

Features

Wireless capability for ease of portability
7-segment LED display for keeping an active count of the amount of people in a room
DC alarm to keep a space from getting too crowded
Ability to control digital outputs, which can be extended to control lights, send messages, etc.

Motivation

As evident by the tables below, the commercial and industrial sectors consume a large percentage of the total energy, with lighting being one of the largest offenders. Our idea for cutting down this consumption was by reducing the amount of energy wasted when an employee is away from their office or cubicle. In a typical setting, an office light and a computer will be ideally on when the employee is at their desk but off or asleep when they are not. We propose a system that can detect when one or more individuals enter an office and switch on all of the electronics, and then detect when the last person exits and safely power everything down. The system has the potential to vastly reduce the amount of wasted energy and could be very valuable to companies world wide.


Figure 1. Energy Consumption Percentatges	Figure 2. Residential Consumption Percentatges	Figure 3. Commercial Consumption Percentatges


Figure 4. Image all the energy that could be saved if the office automator was installed in each cubicle and office in each building!

Proposed System

At its core, our system consists of an array of two infrared emitters and detectors. The receivers are each connected to an RF2500 device such that when a breach in the infrared light stream is detected, an appropriate signal is transmitted to another RF2500, which can signal to the LaunchPad an event has occurred. By placing each IR emitter/detector in parallel around the entrance of an office door or cubicle entrance, we are able to determine which sensor responds first and therefore correctly decide if one has entered or exited the space. When the first person enters, a light is turned on and the computer can be awoken from sleep mode, and as more people enter, the system keeps track on a 7-segment LED display. As people exit, the display updated, and when the last person leaves, the light is turned off and the computer is put into sleep mode.

Authors

Timothy Gao (timothygao@gmail.com)
Stephen Molfetta (sjmolfetta@gmail.com)
Mario Malavé (malave@ti.com)

Pictures & Videos

RF2500 devices used to communicate with the LaunchPad

Infrared receivers that detect the entering and exiting of the room/cubicle

Receiver station with LaunchPad, 7-segment display, and alarm

Source Code

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