An ecosystem enabling User-in-the-Loop demand control in telecommunication and utility networkshas produced all the main components of the whole system proposed in the beginning of the project for the water and energy consumption saving. From the first steps of the research the goals of the fulfillment of a complete system for a Smart Home environment were proposed without knowing until where it could be done. During this chapter the current status and the outlook of it are going to be explained.
9.1 Summary
The thesis have used the UIL principle to affect the behavior of the users by giving feedback every time energy or water was used. Since there are a lot of places in the world with a very high problem of resources, there is a very huge importance of using the resources in the most rational way.
The UIL principle is applied into a whole system for Smart Home environment. The prototype contains all the nodes, communication protocols, server functionalities, feedbacks etc. for the properly performance of the ecosystem. Using the water and energy devices proposed in other projects it is possible to give a feedback to the final user in real-time depending on the conditions. To achieve this, a certain set of feedbacks such as: RGB Led or display are the responsible to show the user its consumption and the consequences of its action. In addition, all the information of the sensors and end-devices can be consulted by an Android Application.
The thesis wants to be the first steps of a promising tool for the future households. Offer-ing the base of the communication protocols, packet frames, a set of server functionalities:
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communication, real-time price consulting, messages to smart-phones, sensors and end-devices, data storage etc.
That is why, the development of the project do not end here but continues "on-going" in the future, looking for the improvement of the system and to resolve the pending issues. In the following section the future work of this research is presented.
9.2 Outlook
The thesis analyzed offers a lot of the basics for the performance of the UIL paradigm inside a Smart Home environment, but the actual prototype example does not cover all the areas discussed in the thesis and in the same time there are some limitations that can be improved in the future.
In the server side, if all the functionalities required for the whole process are take into account almost all of them are developed. Nevertheless, there is an issue with the merge of all them. For this reason, the prototype has to be merged in the next months in order to close the loop and to be able to have all the communications working in a real situation; android application - gateway - sensors/actuators. Also that, both Smart Home and RANET Daemons are well designed and working but there are always improvements that can be done. In the same way, the RF Module is the less worked and still has some work pendent to perfect its performance.
Even there is an Android Application which shows the performance of the sensors, actuators and can be used as a Smart Home controller. The design and implementation of a graphical user interface for the Gateway is a pendent future work that could be done in a future project.
It should be able to control and check all the information of the system: users, devices, create/delete items, control sensors, check the consumption, Smart Home controller etc.
From the protocol AAA side, an authentication graphical user interface for create user could be applied both in the Gateway and in the Android Application. Also that, the identification by RFID or local password is an extra functionality that has to be implemented in a medium term. In the same way, the control of the wallet of each user and the payments of the bill are functionalities required yet.
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In addition to the technical outlook of the project, in order to know the impact of the prototype in the market, some analysis of the target consumer’s opinion have to be done. It would be important to know if the tenant wants to receive every time information about its consumption, if he agrees the fact that identify himself every time to enter in the home. Also that, an analysis of installation costs should be done in order to offer the product to the future possible consumers.
Personally, carrying this project out has meant a great challenge to me because from the very beginning, everything came from scratch and there have been lots of difficulties and obstacles during the development. As well as, the concepts applied in this research are not which ones I am used to. Therefore, to overcome all the issues I had to learn and to study new concepts, new matters that I had never used before. Overall, the experience of being able to realize this project as a "project-manager" of other students has been remarkably good not only for the concepts learned, but because it has allowed me to improve in terms of organization, team-working and self-learning.