設計與實作適用於傳統紅外線家電之低功率無線智慧型遙控器

Abstract

智慧型住宅(Smart Home)技術與寬頻網路的日漸普及，帶動了智慧型網路家電產品的發展。但是目前大多數人都仍然還在使用那些非網路的傳統家電設備(Legacy Home Appliances)。其中有幾個關鍵的原因如產品價格、網路的互通性以及使用者習慣的問題，使得智慧型網路家電設備一直沒有辦法被廣泛使用。因此，配合家庭網路系統來控制傳統家電設備的概念因應而生。許多專家學者也開始針對傳統家電設備提出了各種不同的控制方法和流程。然而，這些針對傳統家電設備所提出的控制方法卻缺乏系統化、全面性的控制程序。因此，在這篇論文之中，我們引入網路分層的概念，提出了一套控制傳統家電設備的三層網路架構。在架構的最上層, 我們設計一個介面供使用者控制和管理傳統家電。而中間是屬於網路傳輸層，主要是使用一些通訊技術來接收和傳送資料。而最底層則定義實體的傳輸媒介處理控制訊號的學習及轉換。我們的控制對象鎖定為能接收紅外線訊號的傳統家電。隨後，我們以無線電模組(TI CC2500)及紅外線收發模組(IR Transceiver Module)做為系統中主要的資料傳輸接面，並實際佈置一個簡單的住家場景，透過我們所提出的架構來管理與控制傳統家電設備。

With the popularity of smart home and broadband networking technologies, more and more networked modern home appliances are researched, developed and promoted. But, the expensive cost and bad interoperability make modern intelligent devices a bad replacement for non-networked legacy home appliances. Hence, many diverse control methods and intelligent control flows are proposed to control legacy home appliances using the existing home networks. However, these methods are lack of a systematic control procedures, including device registration, communication and signal conversion. In this research, we propose an architecture for controlling legacy home appliances by using 3-layer network model. The model consists of upper (users), middle (networking) and lower (devices) layers. The upper layer designs interfaces for users to register and control legacy home appliances. In the middle layer, two or more networking technologies are hybrid to send and receive control commands from users. Then, methods to learning and converting signals are defined in the lower layers. In our system, only infra-rad (IR)-based legacy home appliances are installed in a home environment. After learning the IR signals of legacy appliance, users can control these devices via the user interfaces provided in the upper layer. Then, we adopt RF modules (TI CC2500) and IR transceiver modules to forward commands between the users and the legacy home appliances.