Automating Our Dorm Room — Before Smart Homes Were Cool

In the fourth year of my undergrad days, 4 of us friends came together to take steps towards making an autonomous house for ourselves. We decided the first step would be to automate all the switches away from a room. We requested and were able to requisition ourselves a room whose switches we transformed using ESP8266 boards.

The Solution — ESP8266 + Kinect + Self-Hosted Server

Once online, we connected all the boards to our self-hosted server that maintained a directory of states for each appliance in the room. We could now toggle switches of the room from a website we made to allow an authenticated user to control appliances.

To top it all off, we then connected an MS Kinect Hardware and programmed it to read adult human body gestures (HCI - Human-Computer Interface) in such a way so that them pointing towards and doing a certain action could actuate every appliance in the room.

Recognition

We were granted complete funding from our department for the project as well as highest grades for our successful execution.