The Aware Home is not open access, but there are several ways in which students can get involved in the Aware Home. These include:

1. General interest – If you are looking for a project to ramp up or show off your embedded computing, electronics prototyping, signal processing, mobile computing, or design skills and find the Aware Home appealing, feel free to contact us for some ideas for projects that may fit your level of expertise.
2. Class projects – Students may find the Aware Home an interesting environment in which to design a class project. Courses/topics that relate include, but are not limited to: Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, ECE Capstone Design, Human Computer Interaction, Real-time Systems, Industrial Design, Design for Interactive Environments, Applied Experimental Psychology, and Special Topics. If you think your class project would benefit from use of the Aware Home, contact us.
3. Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) Living Labs Seminar – If you would like to learn more about the Aware Home and other Living Labs under IPaT management, consider joining in the IPaT Living Labs Seminar (CS8001-AHS). Typically, the seminar is held over lunch in the TSRB room 333 with some sessions at the Aware Home. Students are welcome to drop in.
4. Faculty research – Several faculty members from different disciplines have agendas that often utilize the Aware Home. While funding is not a guarantee, there are limited opportunities for exceptional students with the right skills to join on research teams. A good place to start is the IPaT Living Lab Seminar to learn more about research areas of interest.
5. Convergence Innovation Competition – The Convergence Innovation Competition conducted in the Fall and Spring semesters provides opportunities for students to explore new solutions that match the domains of IPaT. Winning teams are awarded some pretty cool prizes and even those who don’t win get some great exposure and feedback on how to improve their products.

The Aware Home environment in itself provides a unique research lab in which to try out concepts. In addition, we are continuing to build the sensing and control capabilities of the home, including an API for linking projects intto the home infrastructure. The core home infrastructure, powered by Zwave (thanks to a donation from Zwave Alliance member companies) includes a traditional set of smarthome sensors and controls. These include:

• Sensors: motion, light, temperature, humidity, door and window, and cameras
• Controls: lights, lamp and appliance modules, and door locks

We are adding other sensing options with technologies our researchers and students are developing (e.g. waterline pressure) and other control / feedback options, such as various display/lighting options for presenting information in different ways around the home.

Project components available at the home for checkout (pending project approval) include:

• Arduinos and other microcontroller platforms
• Sensors
• Output devices
• Embedded computing platforms such as Raspberry Pis
• A wide variety of other tools for designing and building prototypes