Since the July 2013 beta release of the Lab of Things (LoT), a flexible platform for conducting experimental research using connected devices in homes and beyond, there has been a lot of progress on two fronts. As Arjmand Samuel, senior research program manager for Microsoft Research reports, “First, we’ve been busily extending and perfecting various features of LoT; second, we’ve been working closely with academic partners to help them adopt and deploy LoT for their research.”
Samuel’s post on the Microsoft Research Connections Blog goes in-depth on how the Lab of Things team has worked closely with academic collaborators on key requirements, such as being able to support both off-the-shelf and custom devices. “LoT supports a host of off-the-shelf devices, including Z-Wave switches and multisensors, the Philips Hue light bridge, the Kinect for Windows sensor, and the Envi energy sensor.”
He also reports on progress with “making HomeOS (the client-side component of LoT) more robust and extensible.” Also, “LoT now includes a management portal that allows near real-time monitoring of the status of home hubs and enables researchers to monitor deployments separately for each study. The user interface of applications running in each home hub are now available securely from anywhere by using any device with a modern Web browser.”
Academic researchers and students have also been working with Microsoft researchers to adopt the Lab of Things for deploying their experiments, such as the ongoing work at University College London, where a dedicated team of students developed an analytics engine for the Lab of Things. The source code of the analytics engine is available on CodePlex. In Pakistan, professor Affan Syed and his students at FAST-NUCES are using the Lab of Things to develop a system to optimize and control the use of electrical power in homes to help address the acute shortage of energy in that country.
The Lab of Things is also being used for teaching, such as at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, where professor Nilanjan Banerjee is offering a Lab of Things-based graduate-level course on Systems for Smart Home Automation. Students will study the challenges in smart home automation systems and use the Lab of Things to build software systems for smart home automation.
Find more academic projects and additional information about the progress of Lab of Things on the Microsoft Research Connections Blog.
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Athima Chansanchai
Microsoft News Center Staff