Innovation Team | Live Smart
Awards & Nominations
Innovation Team has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
The Challenge | Live Smart
S&S's
Our project is "Save Solar System Smartly (S&S's)." We built a smart house/home that uses solar panels to produce energy. What we don't know is how much of this energy is put to waste. We used datasets from NASA and sensors from the house to manage energy.
1.Introduction:
As we all know, Saudi Arabia’s weather is usually scorching heat during the day, subtle and chilly during the night, and very low chance of rainfall annually. Saudi Arabia’s main source of energy is the sun. But how can we make use of this energy? If we can make solar energy as our number one source, we can save power, save money, and most of all, save Earth!
2.Objective:
We all know that saving energy is important, but what we don’t know is how much of this energy is put to waste. We want to tell the world how much solar energy is consumed, but mainly, calculate how much excessive solar energy is produced. We also want to combine NASA’s weather predictions and smart homes that use IOT to manage them. This is where we welcome Save Solar System Smartly (S&S’s) system.
3.Background:
a.Solar System:
The solar system consists of the biggest star – the sun, the eight planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Dwarf planets such as Pluto. The sun keeps all of these planets, comets and asteroids using its gravity. These planets orbit the sun, one orbit is equal to one year of that planet. Of course, the further away the planet was, the longer it takes to make one full orbit.
When the sun casts its energy and is shone down to planet earth, going through the ozone layer and providing us humans with that vitamin D, how can we use the same concept? Let’s use the same concept, the sun providing humans with vitamin D; can it also activate an object, a house?
B.How solar panels work:
Scientists have found out that when light (photons) strike some compounds of metal, the surface of some metals omit electrons while others accept them. The combination of accepting electrons causes the flow through a conductor providing us by what we cannot live without; photo-electric affect, also known as electricity or photovoltaic affect. This revolution was discovered years ago, but it Albert Einstein who first described it. Photovoltaic means sunlight converted into a flow of electrons (electricity). Firstly, solar cells are made from two elements, silicon (photovoltaic magic) and silver. These two elements combined make one single solar cell. A collection of cells make a solar panel. These panels can absorb light energy from the sun. When this energy is absorbed, it is converted to excess electron energy. So every time we use electricity, we’re basically using the flow of electrons over a conductor.
We mentioned earlier that silicon is photovoltaic magic, but where does silver come in? Silver is a good conductor, therefore, when silver and silicon are united, they provide us with electricity. Of course, the better the conductor was, the less heat is wasted. This means more power is available. We now come to a conclusion that we need a semi-conductor for the photovoltaic effect and a conductor to allow the electricity to flow.
c.How to use solar panels:
As we all know, solar panels are placed on the rooftops of houses. But how should they be displayed? Can anybody put up a solar panel?
Solar panels are a lot more complex than they appear to be. First of all, not anybody can put up a solar panel. It takes real engineers that are specialized in that specific area (Figures 3 & 4). The details are incredibly precise and difficult. Also, they shouldn’t be put up randomly, its best to have them at exactly a 45 degree angle and face south to absorb as much energy as possible. Another factor to consider is to have them away from any types of shade such as long trees or buildings hovering over it. If such things got in the way of those panels, not much energy would be absorbed.
4.Methodology of Save Solar System Smartly (S&S’s) System:
S&S’s system relies on two resources of datasets: NASA’s prediction of weather, and the sensors at smart homes. When the sun releases its energy, the solar panel absorbs this energy and saves it in a smart battery in order to control the devices in the smart home.
When the battery gets charged from the solar panels on the rooftop of the house, it deploys the Internet of Things (IOT) concept to manage everything in the house, from lighting to air-conditioning, opening and closing doors and windows, etc.
If the battery gets low, or is about to be empty, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) of S&S’s system informs the IOT system to reduce the consumption of the energy saved in the battery. (Figure 5) below explains S&S’s system.5.Steps of project:
We started off by brainstorming and searching for idea’s or creative inventions that accommodate the five categories suitable for the challenge. We went with “The Earth and Us – Live Smart.” (Figure 6).
The project works in two parallel steps. First of all, we built a prototype of a smart home (Figure 7), and then we implemented solar panels, sensors and motors.They are all controlled by a Mindostorm robot .
We used mechanical parts and sensors of this robot to build the prototype of the smart house. We used a color sensor (Figures 8-1 and 8-2) to represent change in weather. Although its main job is to detect colors, we programmed it to sense any change in weather such as dust.
We also implemented the use of a touch sensor (Figure 9-1 and 9-2) to sense any types of movements happening inside the house, from sensing people to opening and closing doors. Another sensor was infrared sensors (IR) (Figure 8); we used it to represent solar radiation.
Of course, none of these sensors would work without a brain! Just like a human brain, it would give out information as well as receive data (Figure 11). Any information given such as distance of 50cm, the brain would display 50cm on the screen.
We also used a large motor (Figure 12) that makes everything work automatically. It’s faster, stronger, and can carry heavy objects. We can say that it’s similar to a human’s arms and legs.
6.Conclusion:
To sum up, we built a prototype of a smart house that contains many types of sensors that uses solar panels to produce its energy and save it in a smart battery.
We extracted data form NASA’s datasets, weather prediction websites, and robot sensors. We applied the Internet of Things (IOT) and datamining concept to activate the electrical devices smartly.
Nodered, Python, EV3, and Java have been used to code our system.
7.Acknowledgement:
All Praise is due to Allah for His Glorious Ability and Great Power for giving us the power, patience and knowledge to complete this project in 72 hours.
We would like to thank NASA for all its free resources that support new researches and giving us youth this opportunity to help make a change in this world.
We would like to thank Geeks Valley and Namaa Alunawara for hosting this amazing event and a chance of a life time opportunity for the first time in Madinah.
A special thank you to our host Ahmed Albalawi for organizing this 72 hour event from start to finish.
Our mentors, Dr. Ruqayya Abdulrahman, Dr. Walaa Alharthy and Ms. Maha Alebsi for watching over us with great care.
9.References:
BBC BiteSize: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zk8hvcw/revision
BBC BiteSize: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zggk87h/revision/6
Energy matters: http://www.energymatters.com.au/panels-modules/
Open weather maps: https://openweathermap.org/forecast5
Open weather maps: https://openweathermap.org/api/pollution/co
SpaceApps is a NASA incubator innovation program.