Since its introduction in 2013, the Lab of Things (opens in new tab) (LoT) has captured the imagination of researchers, who are using this flexible, platform for experimental research that uses connected devices. During the past six months, we’ve updated and added features to the LoT. We’ve also seen LoT adopted in the classroom and used for some interesting research projects. We would like to share a few of these projects with you, and hope that they will inspire you to try using the Lab of Things for your own research.
Bringing auditory messages to people who are deaf or hard of hearing
The oven timer beeps, the doorbell rings, the smoke alarm blares: our homes are full of devices that deliver important messages via sound. But to people who cannot hear them, those acoustic messages remain undelivered. The Sound Choice (opens in new tab) team, whose members are students at the University of Washington, set out to solve this predicament. Using LoT, the student researchers integrated auditory data from a network of home sensors and processed the information in real time. The system then relayed the information to a wearable smartwatch that translated the message into tactile and visual output.
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Monitoring elderly community residents
Many older people prefer to “age in place,” remaining in their own home as long as possible. But this poses serious problems for elderly folks living on their own. What happens if they fall or suffer a stroke? Who would know? While attending the University of Washington as a visiting scholar, Christian Bock, a student at Germany’s Heidelberg University, developed an experimental system for monitoring elderly people who live alone. His prototype (see the video below) uses three sensors—one in the kitchen, one on the refrigerator door, and one on the front door—to monitor the movements of the elderly resident. LoT links the devices together and stores the data in the Microsoft Azure cloud, where it is analyzed for signs of inactivity that could indicate an injury or illness. The data could be shared with family or community caregivers, who could then intervene in the event of an apparent medical problem.
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUGyTkGKxw]
Learning about the Internet of Things
Home sensors connected via LoT are just part of the much broader Internet of Things (IoT), that vast array of sensors in our houses, cars, stores, offices, and public spaces. It’s vital that researchers understand how to use the IoT as they design new systems. And what better place to start than by mastering the LoT? That was the conclusion of the faculty at Korea’s Kookmin University, whose Smart Embedded System Lab has been equipped with a comprehensive IoT curriculum based on the LoT platform. Students will use this curriculum (opens in new tab) to complete final projects across many different departments.
Evaluating smart home apps
At another Korean university, the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, project lead Minsu Jo and his classmates are using LoT to understand the nature of people’s everyday activities in a home setting. To do so, they’re evaluating several smart home scenarios in their lab, which has been equipped with a variety of homelike sets and sensors, and they’re employing a home dashboard that lets users review and control the various apps. If you understand Korean, you’ll want to check out their video (opens in new tab), which provides a high-level introduction to LoT and shows off some of their research.
Using LoT for teaching
As the foregoing examples show, people are using LoT as a teaching and research tool at universities around the world, and many of the student projects have been highly creative and potentially useful. See more LoT-based student projects and teaching materials (opens in new tab), including university-level class curricula.
Integrating with Microsoft Azure services
Recently, we have added two samples to CodePlex that demonstrate how you can send LoT sensor data to the cloud via some powerful, but easy-to-use Azure services. The first sample (opens in new tab) shows how to use the Azure Mobile Services SDK to write data to a SQL Azure database from a LoT application. The second sample (opens in new tab) demonstrates how to integrate LoT with (1) Azure Event Hubs, which enables your app to process massive amounts of sensor data, and (2) Azure Stream Analytics, which lets you process complex event data in a low-latency, readily available, and highly scalable cloud environment.
Now that you’ve learned about just a few of the creative and noteworthy ways that students and researchers are using the LoT platform, we hope that you’ll download the latest version and start deploying your research studies.
—Arjmand Samuel (opens in new tab), Senior Research Program Manager, Microsoft Research
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