What's Smart Plug?

SmartPlug is a project aimed at bridging the Internet of Things and the Smart Economy.

Motivation

The “Internet of Things” envisions a world where everyday objects are connected to the Internet, allowing them to send and receive data. Analysts forecast a $6 trillion market with 34 billion devices online by 2020 according to Business Insider.

Unfortunately, older homes and appliances are not wired for IoT, limiting their participation in modern home automation solutions. The Smart Plug solves the problem by retrofitting existing homes to support IoT features like network identification, control and monitoring of all attached appliances.

Further, the Smart Plug allows individual devices to participate in the access economy, expected to be a $335 Billion market by 2025 according to Business Insider. Now, owners of appliances in a home or public space can “rent” them on a per-use or power-consumed basis, creating new streams of revenue for such users.

About Smart Plug

This gives a sense of our project prototype.

About SmartPlug

In this project, we built a device, called the Smart Plug, which plugs into a standard wall outlet, and has an outlet to plug in an appliance. It allows a user to monitor the power use of the plugged-in appliance in a cost-effective way.

The Smart Plug has two major features.

• It allows the user to view the real-time, and past power usage. An estimate of the cost to run the appliance is given along with the power usage.
• It allows the user to turn the appliance on or off either immediately, or through a user-defined schedule. These features will be available to the user on any Android device.

In order to obtain power measurements, the Smart Plug’s current transformer reads the current of the appliance and generates a small AC signal.

Find out more by visiting the project on GitHub.