[Bia16a] Thomas Biacsics. Development of a control application for an automated remote-controllable irrigation system based on open Home Automation Bus 2 and the Eclipse SmartHome Framework. Technical report, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, June 2016. [ bib ]
The number of smart homes is increasing rapidly and the implementation of a home automation system becomes more common nowadays. There are many reasons for this development, first and foremost the price slump of electronic gadgets and devices on today's market makes it more affordable to upgrade a house to an automated smart home. But finally, when it comes to energy-efficiency, time saving and remote-controllability, the usage of a home automation system is inevitable. This paper introduces the promising, open source home automation software named open Home Automation Bus 2 (openHAB2) based on the eclipse SmartHome (ESH) framework. The application of openHAB2 is illustrated by the implementation of a control software component for a custom-developed wireless irrigation controller. The existing irrigation controller communicates via the XBee DigiMesh wireless communication protocol applied on a XBee RF 2.4 GHz module. OpenHAB2 and ESH deliver the required technical infrastructure to serve as the management software component for the proposed irrigation system. Moreover, the openHAB project offers more than 100 additional add-ons, which are used to connect and control various Internet of Things (IoT) devices and service interfaces.

[Wan16] Jiliang Wang. Evaluation of Bluetooth Low Energy in eHealth applications and example of Bluetooth Low Energy App on an Android phone. Master's thesis, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, June 2016. [ bib ]
The goal of this paper is to evaluate Bluetooth Low Energy in eHealth field. eHealth is a new term that was not created long time ago, it still needs introduction to people. In eHealth, data are often transferred between Personal Healthcare Devices and using wireless connection is a convenient way to do it. Four well known wireless connections: ANT+, Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi, ZigBee will be introduced and compared in different categories. The comparison categories are: range, peak power consumption, power efficiency, maximum data transfer speed, security, social popularity and current market ratio. New features of Bluetooth Low Energy will be explained in details and an Android application is developed to demonstrate Bluetooth Low Energy in a use case. The comparison shows that each wireless connections have advantages over others in different categories. Bluetooth Low Energy has the best score in power efficiency, which is important for a Personal Healthcare Device. The Android app is compiled in Android version 4.3, API level 18. Continua certified weight scale from A&D Medical is used to simulate a use case. The Android application is able to be developed in a reasonable time. The Android application could also demonstrate a typical eHealth use case. The wireless connection comparison and the Android application could be done with different approach, which is discussed in later section.

[Bia16b] Thomas Biacsics. Remote-Controlled Automated Irrigation System based on XBee Wireless Technology and open Home Automation Bus. Technical report, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, Jan 2016. [ bib ]
Examination of today’s market for irrigation systems exhibits deficiencies in interconnec- tivity, power-saving and remote-controllability. This paper illustrates a concept for an automated remote-controllable irrigation system consisting of decentralised devices and one central irrigation server, exemplified by a prototype construction of the proposed system. The decentralised devices are battery-powered and based on the Infineon XMC 32 bit micro-controller which implements the uCOS-III real time operating system. Accordingly the decentralised devices are designed to operate consuming less battery power in order to achieve an autonomous operation of six months. The server’s runtime is based on the open Home Automation Bus (openHAB) and hosted on a Raspberry Pi 2. The irrigation devices communicate together over the power-saving XBee DigiMesh wireless technology.

[Ede16] Philip Eder. Implementation of a ZigBee Sensor Network for Ambient Assistant Living. Technical report, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, Jun 2016. [ bib ]
The aim of this thesis is to implement an energy efficient and economical sensor network providing environmental data to enhance adaptive systems. A key factor for technology to assist and to improve the daily life is to adapt to the need of the user and to the environmental situation so the user experience can be maximized and the acceptance of ambient assistant technology by the user is improved. The wireless sensor network based on ZigBee and the software implemented to communicate with the sensor network and to interpret the environmental data are presented. The thesis explains the design and the realization of the prototype.

[Gra16a] Robert Graf. TTE-Graph Graphical User Interface For TTEthernet Creation. Technical report, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, Jan 2016. [ bib ]
TTEthernet is a network technology for safety-related applications primarily in transportation industries (e.g., Aerospace, Space, and automotive) and industrial automation. It extends classical Ethernet with time-critical, deterministic, and safety-relevant capabilities. TTTech Computertechnik AG is the leading provider for TTEthernet components including end-systems and switches. These components are configured by different tools accumulated in the TTEthernet tool-chain. The available tools have the possibility to import configurations in XML format. However, there is currently no GUI (graphical user interface) tool to create these XML configurations. As of now, this has to be done by hand by altering an example file. The goal of this bachelor thesis is to analyze the feasibility to use a graphical user interface to configure a complete TTEthernet network, hence creating the needed XML configurations after a user has graphically arranged and configured a TTEthernet network with all required components. The user does not need XML experience and is able to create a network by using the available hardware documentation only. The resulting tool should also be able to preconfigure time-triggered, rate-constrained and best-effort message transfer in a TTEthernet network.

[Gra16b] Robert Graf. TTE-Graph The first step in planning a time-triggered Ethernet with TTE-Tools. Technical report, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, Jun 2016. [ bib ]
TTEthernet is a network technology for safety-related applications primarily in transportation industries (e.g., aerospace, space and automotive) and industrial automation. It extends clas- sical Ethernet with time-critical, deterministic, and safety-relevant capabilities. To set up and configure a TTEthernet and hence its components TTTechComputertechnik AG provides its customers with a collection of software applications, called TTE-Tools. These are then used to create the necessary configuration files for the components in a step-by-step manner. However, there was no application for the first step, the creation of the Network Description XML file. This had to be done by hand, altering an example file. The goal of this thesis is to create a prototype with a graphical user interface to configure a complete TTEthernet network, hence creating the needed Network Description XML file after a user has graphically arranged and configured a TTEthernet network with all required components. The user does not need XML experience and is able to create a network by using the available hardware documentation only. The result- ing tool also enables the user to preconfigure time-triggered, rate-constrained and best-effort message transfer in a TTEthernet network.

[Loi16b] Thomas Loidolt. Architektur einer alternativen Eingabemethode mittels Balance Board. Technical report, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, Jan 2016. [ bib ]
In der vorliegenden Bachelorarbeit werden die unterschiedlichen Bluetooth Stacks vorgestellt und die Kompatibilität mit diversen Bluetooth Adaptern und einer Wii Softwarebibliothek anhand eines Funktionstests am PC evaluiert. Neben der Erläuterung der Charakteristik und Funktionalität der Hardware des Wii Balance Boards werden auf der Softwareebene die Verbindungsmechanismen und die weitere Verarbeitung der Messwerte beschrieben. Des Weiteren zeigen bereits bekannte Windows Tools, dass die grundlegende Verbindung eines PCs mit dem Balance Board funktioniert und eine Verwendung dieser Hardware als Eingabegerät möglich ist. Der Schwerpunkt dieser Arbeit liegt auf der Integration des Wii Balance Boards in das AsTeRICS (Assistive Technology Rapid Integration & Construction Set) Framework. Abschließend wird durch die Steuerung des „Pong“-Spiels ein praktisches Anwendungsgebiet dieser Architektur gezeigt und in Hinblick auf die zweite Bachelorarbeit auf weitere komplexere Einsatzgebiete hingewiesen.

[Loi16a] Thomas Loidolt. Anwendung einer alternativen Eingabemethode mittels Balance Board. Technical report, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, Jun 2016. [ bib ]
Heutzutage ist es von großer Bedeutung, dass viele unterschiedliche Eingabegeräte auf dem Markt verfügbar sind, um für jede Situation die passendste und effektivste Eingabehardware nutzen zu können. Ein relativ neues Gerät stellt hierbei das Wii Balance Board dar. Im Rahmen der ersten Arbeit wurde die Kompatibilität zwischen der Hardware und dem AsTeRICS Software-Framework hergestellt und getestet. Mit der zweiten Arbeit wird nun versucht, das erstellte Plugin für das Wii Balance Board in verschiedenen AsTeRICS-Modellen zu nutzen, diverse Anwendungsgebiete zu erforschen und zu bewerten. Hierfür werden einige Spiele ausgewählt und Steuerungen in AsTeRICS entworfen. Außerdem wird eine simple medizinische Diagnoseanwendung erstellt, um zu zeigen, dass das Board in Kombination mit dem Framework universell einsetzbar ist. Die vorgestellten Modelle werden modular aufgebaut und durch einige Komponenten in deren Funktionalität erweitert. Anhand einer Tastaturemulation und Mauszeigersteuerung werden einige Spiele mit dem Balance Board gesteuert und anschließend mit den konventionellen Eingabegeräten verglichen und bewertet. Die abschließende Bewertung zeigt, dass sich viele Spiele mit dieser Hardware-Software- Kombination brauchbar steuern lassen und das Balance Board ein alternatives Eingabegerät mit hohem Spaßfaktor ist. Spiele und Anwendungen die jedoch eine sehr hohe Präzision und Reaktionsgeschwindigkeit in der Bedienung erfordern, sind für das Balance Board eher ungeeignet.

[Sch16] Denise Schindelböck. Three Chronic Disease Alarm Routines in an AAL-Environment. Master's thesis, CeMSIIS Center of Medical Statistics, Informatics and Intelligent Systems@Medical University of Vienna, Mar 2016. [ bib ]
Every year life expectancy is increasing and so is the proportion of people with one or more chronic diseases. Together with the problems of an ageing populations this causes much higher costs in the healthcare sector than so- ciety is able to pay. Simultaneously people want to age in their own home. Active Assisted Living can help to prolongate the time people can live in a decent way in thei own home by increasing their autonomy and self-condence. This thesis presents an implementation of a prototype with three decision trees to detect dangerous health conditions for Diabetes Type 1, Diabetes Type 2, Hypertension and Heart Failure. Using the information we collect from Personal Health Devices and data from the Active-Assisted-Living en- vironment, we are in the position to customize the thresholds and to receive individual results. Moreover, with the help of a modied (oral glucose intake, insulin intake, alcohol intake, stress eect, health status eect and exercise eect ) glucose- insulin model (based on the minimal model of Stolwijk and Hardy) we pre- dicted the future glucose concentration of the patient and predict two pa- rameters of the model to achieve further precision. We validated our model with an intention-to-treat pilot study with 8 subjects and obtained a signicantly better (p < 2.2-16) result than the orig- inal model. We can therefore generate the hypothesis that our modications improve the forecast precision.

[Ham16] Clemens Hammer. Construction of an assisting service robot based on the ROS-framework. Master's thesis, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, Jun 2016. [ bib ]
In the last few years, using an assisting robot for supporting functionality inside the living area becomes more and more important. Typical functions are navigation, pick and place, object detection and further more. Available robots on the market, however, are very expensive and rarely available as an open source solution. Therefore this thesis deals about the construction of an assisting service robot. For this, the minimally needed components are evaluated and discussed in detail. These components can be divided into software and hardware, where each part is further divided into safety critical and non safety critical. The safety critical part implements all functions, which are basically needed for the movement of the platform. In detail this means the control and easurement of the speed of the platform and further the observation of the surrounding environment to avoid collisions. The non safety critical part includes all required modules to realize a semi-autonomous robot platform. A pre-developed robotic framework will be used to implement all necessary software modules, like navigation, localization etc.

[Lam16] Werner Lamprecht. Automated Data Acquisition and Analysis in Office Buildings using Wireless Sensor Networks. Master's thesis, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, Jun 2016. [ bib ]
Energy efficiency is a big issue for the planning of buildings. For planning new buildings far too little emphasis is still placed on keeping the operating costs for heating, ventilation and air conditioning low. If energy efficient systems are installed, the maintenance, the monitoring and consequential the proper control of such systems is often neglected. This causes, that the initial investment does not achieve the expected results. Many of such systems do not have the required sensors to monitor and control the ongoing operation. Accordingly this leads to an incorrect control of installed components which leads to bad indoor climate and unnecessary costs for energy. In order to avoid such issues, as a part of this thesis, a system has been developed which monitors the required physical quantities such as temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide. The quantities are monitored for a certain period of time, like two or three weeks. During that period, the collected data gets analysed for errors and plausibility with different automated algorithms. This further on helps to uncover errors in components of buildings control systems or in the control algorithms of such. During the monitoring process, from sensing a physical quantity to storing the data in a database, possible sources of errors are depicted and algorithms for data analysis are de- veloped. The results can be used to help to evaluate the collected data and to identify error sources, which a supervisor might not notice because of the big amount of data. The automated data collection process is realized with a Wiotech wireless sensor network system and the open data storage and monitoring solution JEVis 3.0. The automated anal- ysis and evaluation of the data was developed with the KNIME analytics platform. Among others, the implemented algorithms are process boundaries observation, anomaly detection, outlier detection or open window detection. Applying these algorithms during a field test to validate the developed system proved its effectiveness by detecting an erroneous control of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system in the demonstration building ENERGYbase.

[Wol16] Thomas Wolfram. Erkennen von Gefahrensituationen im AAL Umfeld mittels nicht-invasiver Messdatenerhebung. Master's thesis, ArT-Lab@Research Group Embedded Systems, FH Technikum Wien, Nov 2016. [ bib ]
This thesis describes the development of a monitoring system, which assists personal care givers. The assistive system is intended to detect potentially harmful situations, which can arise during a normal day. Special measures were taken to record the necessary data only by means of non-invasive sensor technology. These are sensors which do not record any personal data, such as, for example, Humidity or temperature values. In contrast to this, cameras or microphones that intrude into the private sphere of the supervised person and would adversely affect their quality of life. Three test cases were used to document the necessary requirements: a person cooking a meal on the stove, taking a shower or going to the toilet. The potential risks for human health are leaving the stove on or a medical emergency in the shower or in the toilet. The middleware from the MA23 project was used as the basis for this project. Based on the documented requirements, the functionality of the middleware was extended in the form of bundles. The following bundles were implemented:

-) database-bundle -) multi-agent bundle -) rule-engine bundle -) machine-learning bundle -) alert-and-information bundle -) data-concentrator bundle

Detecting a possibly hazardous situation by specifying a simple humidity- or temperature threshold turned out to be inadequate. Any of the test cases would only show too many false positives with the real hazard going unnoticed. The result was a too early or too late detection of a shower or cooking process (various minutes). Because of this reason, a machine-learning algorithm (in the form of artificial neural network) was used to correctly estimate the duration of a process, based on reading the temperature or humidity. If the “average” process time is exceeded and alert notification is triggered or an alarm raised. Statistical methods and a final k-fold cross-validation were used to evaluate the quality of the detection rate of the prototype. The prototype developed was able to successfully detect potential harmful situations and respond appropriately by triggering an action. The last chapter discusses the problems which were encountered during the build process and implementation of said prototype in greater detail. Finally, an projection on the further development of the system is given.