Monitoring and loggingsystem for home use. : An 8-bit approach.

Sammanfattning: The thesis discusses the creation and implementation of a monitoring and notificationsystem for home use. The topic may have interest during the warm Swedish summer andlong winter nights, when the weather conditions put home flora to the test. The vividimagination together with a life-long experience of the author predicts a total devastation ofgreen plants inside the apartment. A more general approach will allow tracking e.g. of livinghabits and notification of important events like mail arrival.The paper discusses a power management of devices, wireless and wired communicationand data storage on embedded 8-bit microcontroller manufactured by Microchip. A simpleanalysis of price, performance and memory requirements is done. The practicalimplementation of the prototype suffered somewhat from lack of lab space and otherlimitations of the home environment, where the device was assembled.The achieved results suggest the possibility of such realization. However, the realization hasincluded major changes compared to the originally envisioned device, in order to keepwithin the limits brought on by the home environment.The prototype has some design flaws and is a subject to further revision. Nevertheless, thebasic idea and solution have proved to be feasible: A modern 8-bit MCU has the capacity torun the intended kind of monitoring and logging system. However the performance is slightlyless than hoped for and the experienced memory limitations may suggest a migration to a16-bit architecture.