This Special Issue presents the recent advances in sensor technologies for smart homes, including fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors for detecting the presence and number of occupants, the Internet of things for monitoring CO2 concentration, and designing a novel eye-tracking system for monitoring and controlling a smart home, and infrared thermal sensors for fall detection. Such new explorations are pushing the boundary of sensing technologies and, thus, will have more profound implications for the future smart home. Advanced machine learning and data mining algorithms have been proposed to address sensor failure, appliance identification, and human activity recognition in a home environment. These results will enable a promising, sustainable deployment of sensing technologies. A novel multi-agent gamification system is proposed for managing tasks between household members and between families, which demonstrate another dimension of future smart home application. This Special Issue concludes with a review on sensors for human activity recognition. This work paves the roadmap for deploying smart home systems in different socioeconomic contexts. The whole Special Issue has significantly helped to shape our understanding of the strength, implications, and barriers of deploying long-term, sustainable, sensor technologies for smart homes.

Smart homes, home automation and ambient-assisted living are terms used to describe technological systems that enrich our living environment and provide means to support care, facilitate well-being and improve comfort. This handbook provides an overview of the domain from the perspective of health care and technology. In Part 1, we set out to describe the demographic changes in society, including ageing and diseases and impairments which lead to the needs for technological solutions. In Part 2, we describe the technological solutions, ranging from sensor-based networks, components, to communication protocols that are used in the design of smart homes. We also deal will biomedical features which can be measured and services that can be delivered to end-users as well as the use of social robots. In Part 3, we present best practices in the field. These best practices mainly focus on existing projects in Europe, the USA and Asia, in which people receive help through dedicated technological solutions being part of the continuum of the home environment and care.

Smart Sensors Networks: Communication Technologies and Intelligent Applications explores the latest sensor and sensor networks techniques and applications, showing how networked wireless sensors are used to monitor and gather intelligence from our surrounding environment. It provides a systematic look at the unique characteristics of wireless sensor networks through their usage in a broad range of areas, including healthcare for the elderly, energy consumption, industrial automation, intelligent transportation systems, smart homes and cities, and more. The book shows how sensor-networks work and how they are applied to monitor our surrounding environment. It explores the most important aspects of modern sensors technologies, providing insights on the newest technologies and the systems needed to operate them. Readers will find the book to be an entry point for understanding the fundamental differences between the various sensor technologies and their use in for different scenarios. Indexing: The books of this series are submitted to EI-Compendex and SCOPUS - Presents numerous specific use-cases throughout, showing practical applications of concepts - Contains contributions from leading experts around the globe - Collects, in one place, the latest thinking on an emerging topic - Addresses the security and privacy issues inherent in sensor deployment

Automate and control your home using the power of the BeagleBone Black with practical home automation projects About This Book Build, set up, and develop your circuits via step-by-step tutorial of practical examples, from initial board setup to device driver management Get access to several kinds of computer peripherals to monitor and control your domestic environment using this guide This book is spread across 10 chapters all focused on one practical home automation project Who This Book Is For This book is for developers who know how to use BeagleBone and are just above the “beginner” level. If you want to learn to use embedded machine learning capabilities, you should have some experience of creating simple home automation projects. What You Will Learn Build a CO (and other gas) sensor with a buzzer/LED alarm to signal high concentrations Log environment data and plot it in a fancy manner Develop a simple web interface with a LAMP platform Prepare complex web interfaces in JavaScript and get to know how to stream video data from a webcam Use APIs to get access to a Google Docs account or a WhatsApp/Facebook account to manage a home automation system Add custom device drivers to manage an LED with different blinking frequencies Discover how to work with electronic components to build small circuits Use an NFS, temperature sensor, relays, and other peripherals to monitor and control your surroundings In Detail BeagleBone is a microboard PC that runs Linux. It can connect to the Internet and can run OSes such as Android and Ubuntu. BeagleBone is used for a variety of different purposes and projects, from simple projects such as building a thermostat to more advanced ones such as home security systems. Packed with real-world examples, this book will provide you with examples of how to connect several sensors and an actuator to the BeagleBone Black. You'll learn how to give access to them, in order to realize simple-to-complex monitoring and controlling systems that will help you take control of the house. You will also find software examples of implementing web interfaces using the classical PHP/HTML pair with JavaScript, using complex APIs to interact with a Google Docs account, WhatsApp, or Facebook. This guide is an invaluable tutorial if you are planning to use a BeagleBone Black in a home automation project. Style and approach This step-by-step guide contains several home automation examples that can be used as base projects for tons of other home automation and control systems. Through clear, concise examples based on real-life situations, you will quickly get to grips with the core concepts needed to develop home automation applications with the BeagleBone Black using both the C language and high-level scripting languages such as PHP, Python, and JavaScript.

Calling for future law reform, Burdon questions if you will have privacy in a world of ubiquitous data collection.

Internet of Things (IoT) is a recent technology paradigm that creates a global network of machines and devices that are capable of communicating with each other. Security cameras, sensors, vehicles, buildings, and software are examples of devices that can exchange data between each other. IoT is recognized as one of the most important areas of future technologies and is gaining vast recognition in a wide range of applications and fields related to smart homes and cities, military, education, hospitals, homeland security systems, transportation and autonomous connected cars, agriculture, intelligent shopping systems, and other modern technologies. This book explores the most important IoT automated and smart applications to help the reader understand the principle of using IoT in such applications.

Technologies in today’s society are rapidly developing at a pace that is challenging to stay up to date with. As an increasing number of global regions are implementing smart methods and strategies for sustainable development, they are continually searching for modern advancements within computer science, sensor networks, software engineering, and smart technologies. A compilation of research is needed that displays current applications of computing methodologies in the progression of global cities and how smart technologies are being utilized. Sensor Network Methodologies for Smart Applications is a collection of innovative research on the methods of intelligent systems and technologies and their various applications within sustainable development practices. While highlighting topics including machine learning, network security, and optimization algorithms, this book is ideally designed for researchers, scientists, developers, programmers, engineers, educators, policymakers, geographers, planners, and students seeking current research on smart technologies and sensor networks.

Smart home technologies promise to transform domestic comfort, convenience, security and leisure while also reducing energy use. But delivering on these potentially conflicting promises depends on how they are adopted and used in homes. This book starts by developing a new analytical framework for understanding smart homes and their users. Drawing on a range of new empirical research combining both qualitative and quantitative data, the book then explores how smart home technologies are perceived by potential users, how they can be used to link domestic energy use to common daily activities, how they may (or may not) be integrated into everyday life by actual users, and how they serve to change the nature of control within households and the home. The book concludes by synthesising a range of evidence-based insights, and posing a series of challenges for industry, policy, and research that need addressing if a smart home future is to be realised. Researchers will find this book provides useful insights into this fast-growing field

Collecting and processing data is a necessary aspect of living in a technologically advanced society. Whether it’s monitoring events, controlling different variables, or using decision-making applications, it is important to have a system that is both inexpensive and capable of coping with high amounts of data. As the application of these networks becomes more common, it becomes imperative to evaluate their effectiveness as well as other opportunities for possible implementation in the future. Sensor Technology: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that brings together new ways to process and monitor data and to put it to work in everything from intelligent transportation systems to healthcare to multimedia applications. It also provides inclusive coverage on the processing and applications of wireless communication, sensor networks, and mobile computing. Highlighting a range of topics such as internet of things, signal processing hardware, and wireless sensor technologies, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for research and development engineers, IT specialists, developers, graduate students, academics, and researchers.

Significant health-industry human resource needs increase the reliance on family and friends to support older adults hoping to age in place. This book explores how recent improvements in integrated home technologies have the potential to address those challenges. The book considers how embedded home sensors can be used to monitor the health and wellbeing of older adults and how that can be used to assist with supporting safety and well-being. The content is designed to help multiple stakeholders in the supportive smart home space to better understand the complexity of this field and the need for transdisciplinary collaboration. These stakeholders include the older adults who will benefit from supportive smart home technology; informal and formal caregiver and healthcare professionals concerned about the older adult’s well-being; researchers from multiple disciplines in the supportive smart home area and their funders; companies looking to develop solutions and services or expand their offerings; policy makers who want to ensure privacy and equity in access and a successful integration of these technologies into the evolving health and social services sectors; and students, the future leaders in AgeTech. Overall, the intent of the book is to inspire engineers, computer scientists, industrial designers, clinicians and healthcare providers, social scientists, students, policy makers, and older adults and their caregivers to collaborate in advancing the supportive smart home space to develop more options for aging in place.