As energy conservation becomes more important in the following years homeowners will want to better utilize the amount of power that they use. Houses were and are still built under the assumption that power is a cheap commodity and homes can be quite wasteful in that regard. There is a broad range of information that a home wireless sensor network could collect to allow for better utilization of the energy.

The best way to do this would be to place several sensors in each room. These sensor could collect various pieces of information including temperature, ambient light levels, and if there is a person in the room. The information would then be transmitted back to a central unit, which would replace the thermostat, that would have control over the lights and programmable vents to control the temperature in the room. Currently, vent covers need to be adjusted manually and can take a long time to dial in correctly. By turning the temperature control over to the computer it can be set to a higher degree of precision and can be changed based on the time of day and if there are people in the room. The light control can elevate the ”Dad turning off the lights” syndrome where a parent goes through the house turning off lights that aren’t in use. By using the information collected by these devices the homeowner can then see which rooms/devices are using the most power/heat and make changes based on that. In order to make installation easier the devices will communicate wirelessly.

There are several potential problems with this system. The largest is that these devices would need some way to receive power. Batteries are an option but they need to be replaced which will cause more maintenance work for the homeowner. They also shouldn’t be disposable because the idea behind this is to lower costs. In order to fix these problems the devices will need to replace either a wall outlet, a light switch, or both. The sensors can then pull their energy from the electrical lines already present in the house. A plus to this is that because they will already be hooked up to the outlet they can be used to monitor the amount of power that the devices attached to the outlet are using and can shut them off. A small capacitor will be able to power the sensors when there is no current in the circuit they are plugged into.

Another problem that needs to be overcome is how to know which device is in which room. In a large installation it could take a long time to determine where each of the devices are located if each is done individually. There are two potential solutions to this problem. Every device could be pair with a master sensor in the room to provide a relationship and then only the master sensor would have to be located. Another solution is to triangulate the location of each of the sensors after four of the others have been positioned correctly. This is the best solution because it will also make sure that all the sensors have at least four paths to communicate back to the control center.

Wireless sensor networks have a broad range of uses both in industrial and at home. Due to the cost and limitations of these devices they haven’t seen widespread use yet. By designing wireless sensor networks to not be a throw away device they can provide a return on investment even to household users.