Grant program to support gifted students focused on ZigBee technology

MICHAL BLAHO, ĽUDOVÍT FARKAS, PETER FODREK, MARTIN FOLTIN Institute of control and industrial informatics

Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Slovak University of Technology University

Ilkovičova 3, 812 19 Bratislava SLOVAK REPUBLIC

michal.blaho@stuba.sk, ludovit.farkas@stuba.sk, peter.fodrek@stuba.sk Abstract: Real-world models improve the learning process because the students are often frustrated by the constant use of simulations. The models are however usually too expensive so one of the ways of obtaining cheaper models is the DIY process. Gifted students are capable of building these real models when they have the right conditions and motivations. Because the financing of these projects is costly for the smaller faculties, the solution to this problem is the utilization of grants. This paper presents our experience with the use of a financial grant for gifted students. The most work with the actual building of the processes was done by the students with the teachers overseeing their progress. Key-Words: - Grant, ZigBee, Home automation, Railroad model, Embedded device, Education, Tatra banka foundation 1 Introduction At present, the computers and simulation software represent the dominant role in the learning process, and it can have demotivating effect on students. According to [1], the involvement of the students in the research process, seminars and individual research activities is very useful. The possibility of the collaboration of the students during the learning process and the development of their engineering skills and programming skills were also presented in [2]. The paper showed the need of individual approach to each student to improve their skills even more.

The authors of [3] taught the students the proper way of scientific writing. And they claim that a research proposal is similar to a grant proposal in many ways (in fact, many grant proposals are also research proposals when the grant involves research to be performed, but a grant proposal always asks for funding, while research proposals only sometimes). A grant is in other words a special form of financing based on competition for scientific research themes of national interest and distinct originality [4].

Therefore we also based the grant proposal on the individual approach to each gifted student and his own contribution to the project. Real systems on which the students could perform experiments are often very expensive. The newer technology, the more expensive laboratory system dependence applies here. The schools can afford them usually

only by means of grant funds. The solution of this situation could be the building of low cost models that we are able to create with the use of modern technological resources. Such "self-made" approach can be motivational for the students themselves, who gain new knowledge about a technological process not only by its real use, but also by contributing to the design and construction.

2 The Tatra banka foundation The Tatra banka foundation is a prestigious philanthropic institution that brings inspirational moments and attractive opportunities to enhance the quality of education. The main ambition of the Tatra banka foundation is to raise educational standards and provide space for the best students. The foundation's activities are focused on the area of support for the arts and restoration of cultural heritage. 2.1 The E-TALENT grant The Tatra banka foundation supports active student groups of all three levels of study, teachers and researchers who are dedicated to research in the field of applied and industrial information technologies with the E-TALENT grant. The funding may be used for the direct costs of research teams, which include students, so that real scientific work and the possible practical outcomes could be

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realized on the selected faculty's technical orientation. The maximum amount of support the teams can apply to any project is 5 000€.

Thanks to the experience of ZigBee technology, we decided to submit the project to the E-TALENT grant called: The use of ZigBee technology in control. We have chosen 6 people (students and teachers) from our department to form a team to build real laboratory models based on the Zigbee wireless technology. The aim of this project was to extend the knowledge of ZigBee wireless technology and its use in the control gained by the students. Practical outcomes should be further used in the educational process. The laboratory processes will motivate other students to design new technological processes. In the project we designed and built three laboratory models, each works with a wireless control in another application [5].

Our original financial requirement for building the models was 3500 Eur, but the final decision of the E-TALENT committee was to provide us with 2250 Eur, so we had to rework the budget to meet this requirement. The plan was to build 3 laboratory models based on the Zigbee technology of which the firts was a model of a railroad, the second was a stand equipped with home automation appliances and the third model was an embedded device. 3 ZigBee

ZigBee is the only standards-based wireless 802.15.4 technology designed to address the unique needs of low-cost, low-power wireless sensor and control networks. The ZigBee standard employs 64 bit (IEEE) and short 16 bit addresses. The short address supports over 65 535 nodes per network. ZigBee is a multiple access network with CSMA/CA access method where the preferred topologies are the mesh and star. Mesh topology enables flexible network configuration and provides redundancy in the available routes. The star topology is necessary for RF (Reduced Function) devices, as they are not capable of routing [6, 7].

ZigBee is designed for applications that need to transmit small amounts of data while being battery powered so the architecture of the protocols and the hardware is optimized for low power consumptions of the end device. It provides long battery life. The ZigBee security architecture includes security mechanisms to protect transmitting data. There are number of publications devoted to the study of ZigBee technology and their implementation in real applications. ZigBee found usage in many applications like building automation, remote

control, health care, home automation and many others [8].

Fig.1 XBee module

4 Railroad model The goal of the project part called Railroad model was to create a workplace that would control the direction and movement of locomotives, sense their position and control switches. Transmission of the signals was performed using the ZigBee wireless technology. Solving of the project began by studying models of railways and design our own. This step was important to construct a model that is sufficiently comprehensive to address the complex tasks of communication and management. For the deployment of the ZigBee technology motion control interfaces (PCB) were needed to make. Each locomotive had disconnected the power connections from the collectors to the engine. These connections are from individual axles connected and led out as a control circuit power supply for locomotives. The output from the circuit was connected in place of the original collectors to ensure the functionality of the electronic again. Control circuit of the locomotive uses digital outputs to control the direction and PWM output to control the speed of the locomotive from XBee module.

Fig. 2 Locomotive

The switching circuit does not have sockets for the XBee modules, but it has three pairs of terminals.

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One is for the power supply, other to detect rising and falling edge for direction of switching (from XBee module) and final terminal electrically handles the physical switching on rails. The last PCB serves as the main interface to the XBee module to connect to any device using the connector (in present-configuration 13). All the connectors can be separated. The circuit is therefore not bound only to the rail and can be used in any application implementing the XBee device. The position of the locomotive on the track was sensed electrically unlike the most cases where it is sensed optically. All prototypes were tested for scale model railroad, and currently are improved. The model will be mostly used for the presentation on the lectures of various classes dealing with communication and control.

Fig. 3 XBee interface and switching

5 Home automation The aim of the project part called Home automation was to create a workplace that combines technical resources of wired and wireless home automation technology for the needs of the educational process. A comparison of wired and wireless technologies has shown that for the effective functioning of home automation the right combination of both technologies is needed. The wired technology used for making the model is X10, a technology that allows expansion of the existing electricity networks for control functions and the wireless technology used was ZigBee, an energy efficient manner that allows the remote control of some additional features in a smart home.

In the software implementation, we have used the open platform Unix/Linux, the control programs for various levels of management are written in C and the application user interface in C++. Besides the possibility of local control, we created a web

interface through which you can control the devices over the Internet. This interface is designed in PHP. The objectives of the project were fulfilled and the actual output will be used to support the educational process.

Fig. 4 Home automation panel

6 Embedded device Part of the project called Embedded device dealt with the creation of an embedded system, which is able to create a visual and interactive interface between man and the XBee wireless module. We have decided to use a XBee 2.4 GHz module, a microcontroller from Microchip (18F series) and a 4x20 character display with KS0066 controller (HD44780 compatible). The first version of the device was created only with demonstration LEDs on the panel that showed the functionality of the digital output, PWM output and as the user input, three buttons were used. A new, improved version contains extra input-output connector to XBee module on the front panel control with incremental encoder.

Fig. 5 Embedded device scheme

The program for the PIC microcontroller is

written in the C language in MPLAB environment, the PC control software was created in Matlab. The embedded device can be controlled directly via the

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buttons and display, which are on the module (controlled with AT commands), or remote through the Matlab environment (using API frames). In the educational process we can use the alternative circuit that uses only a wireless XBee module with power and contact field and sensors. The device will be used in the educational process to familiarize students with the ZigBee technology, working with IOs and sensors. 7 Conclusion This paper presented our approach to the obtaining of real laboratory models for the learning process. The solution for the lack of finance for the purchase of laboratory models is the utilization of financial grants for gifted students. Our team has applied for a grant at the Tatra banka foundation that provides space for the best students. Our goal was to build three laboratory models that act as real-life substitutions in the learning process. The models consisted of a model of a railroad, a home automation model and an embedded device and all of them were based on the ZigBee wireless technology.

The application for the project was made by all members of the team together. Specifically we had to plan the work schedule and the budget. Because the final budget approved by the committee was lower than the original budget, we had to deal with this situation and rework the schedule. The project lasted the whole year 2012 and it was concluded by a final report, which is now evaluated by the project committee. Although the laboratory models were the main output of the project, there were also some other benefits for the students.

The project contributed to their final theses and they learned to work as a team, learned to plan their work and to plan the budget needed for the project to be done. The mutual opinion of all the participating students is that it deepened their problem solving skills, their programming skills and they learned how to work under a grant funded project. Acknowledgement This work has received support from the Tatra banka foundation in E–TALENT project “The use of ZigBee technology in control” under contract number 2011et018. It has been supported by the project KEGA 032STU-4/2011 too.

References: [1] K. Jahan, M. Savelski, Research Experiences

for Undergraduates (REU) in Pollution Prevention and Sustainability, Proceedings of the 3rd WSEAS/IASME International Conference on ENGINEERING EDUCATION, Vouliagmeni, Greece, July 11-13, 2006, pp.190-192, ISBN: 960-8457-47-5

[2] R. Ramli, M. Md. Yunus, N. M. Ishak, Experience of Robotic Teaching for Malaysian Gifted Enrichment Program at PERMATApintar, 9th WSEAS International Conference on EDUCATION and EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (EDU '10), Iwate Prefectural University, Japan October 4-6, 2010, pp. 163-166, ISBN: 978-960-474-232-5

[3] S. C. Cismas, Scientific Writing for Environment Engineering Students in the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Proceedings of the 5th IASME / WSEAS International Conference on ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT (EE '10), University of Cambridge, UK February 23-25, 2010, pp. 356-361, ISBN: 978-960-474-159-5

[4] B. Prepelita-Raileanu, Knowledge Innovation and Technology Transfer. Research as Part of the Romanian Engineering Education, Proceedings of the 8th WSEAS International Conference on Educational Technologies (EDUTE '12), Porto, Portugal July 1-3, 2012, pp. 99-104, ISBN: 978-1-61804-104-3

[5] M. Blaho, J. Ozimy, M. Kusenda, M. Foltin, New learning models using Matlab and ZigBee, Technical Computing Bratislava 2012: 20th Annual Conference Proceedings, Bratislava, 7.11.2012, ISBN 978-80-970519-4-5

[6] ZigBee Alliance, ZigBee Technology [online] ZigBee Alliance, cit: 20.12.2012, available at <http://www.zigbee.org>

[7] Digi International Inc., ZigBee and RF Modules [online] Digi International Inc., cit: 20.12.2012, available at <http://www.digi.com/>

[8] M. Blaho, M. Urban, P. Fodrek, M. Foltin. Wireless network effect on PI and type-2 fuzzy logic controller, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS, Issue 1, Volume 6, 2012, pp. 18-25, ISSN: 1998-4480

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