power outlets touted as the future
Turns out, using the Internet to control our houses is not too far away. A group of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication Systems ESK in Munich, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern, have developed a new power outlet that supports the brand-new IPv6 Internet protocol.
These new outlets, known as the wireless smart socket, could revolutionise the way we turn things on and off in homes.
“We have been able to connect the power outlets wirelessly using the IPv6 protocol,” says ESK research engineer G"unter Hildebrandt. “All household appliances plugged in one of the sockets can be switched on and off remotely using an IPv6-compatible device such as a smartphone or laptop PC - from anywhere.”
According to Science Daily, the wireless power outlets are a component of the HexaBus home automation system that was developed by the ITWM as part of the mySmartGrid project.
“The HexaBus components make the smart home of the future a reality. They enable household appliances to be controlled intelligently, thus optimising or reducing electricity consumption. For example, the householder can start the washing machine during cheap-rate off-peak hours, or run the dishwasher when the photovoltaic panels on the roof are generating sufficient power,” says industrial engineer Mathias Dalheimer of the ITWM, who leads the SmartGrid project and is its chief programmer.
Users have no need to worry about the security of their data - all information is transmitted in encrypted form, Phys.org reports.
To make this possible, the experts modified Contiki to enable it to operate with the AES-128 advanced encryption standard. Wireless control signals are transmitted in the 868-MHz frequency band.
“This permits users to remotely control a widely distributed network of appliances. The distance between the power outlet and the router can be as high as 30 metres,” explains Hildebrandt. The HexaBus power outlets are ready for commercial application.
Their manufacture has been entrusted to embedded brains GmbH, the industrial partner that was also responsible for the hardware development of the power outlets and USB sticks. Meanwhile, the researchers have a new idea up their sleeves: they want to enhance their system with multi-hop networking capability.
By linking together a series of power outlets, the router will be able to pass messages from one to another, thus extending the range of the communication system - a solution that could be of interest to businesses for their office buildings and industrial sites.
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