Wireless Smoke Sensor
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Date
2010
Authors
Mais Sawafta
Salam Shanableh
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Abstract
Every year in the United States, over 400,000 residential fires result in 4,000 fatalities and 20,000 injuries. Over 50% of those fatalities occur in homes without smoke detectors. The significance of smoke detectors is evident, and the statistics substantiate the need for the most advanced smoke detectors possible. The motivation behind the project came from brainstorming and thoughts regarding bolstering home safety. The importance of smoke detection is one of the chief safety concerns for residential (single-family) housing. Most smoke detectors on the current market are individual units sans communication or connections to other smoke detectors. Thus, only the smoke detector that sounds an alarm is the one which senses the smoke. The solution is a wireless implementation of smoke detectorsincreasing safety in terms of saving lives and property. In the incident of a fire, residents are alerted more rapidly as response time is decreased, thereby increasing the chance for survival. So, this project "Wireless smoke sensor" became to meet our community needs. The chief goal entails designing and implementing a wireless network of smoke detectors sans the need of a central console. The idea is to set off the alarm in all of the smoke detectors in the network (i.e. in a house), thus allowing the warning to reach the entire household. All of the smoke detectors are set off after one detector detects smoke. The smoke detector that goes off wirelessly alerts all the other smoke detectors in the network, subsequently setting off all the smoke detectors. To differentiate the originating detector and the other detectors, each detector is assigned its own distinct alarm and can also produce the exact alarm of the other detectors. For instance, in a network of three smoke detectors (smoke detector A, smoke detector B, and smoke detector C), smoke detector A has been assigned smoke alarm A, smoke detector B has been assigned smoke alarm B, and smoke detector C has been assigned smoke alarm C. Thus, if smoke detector A detects smoke, the detector wirelessly transmits a signal to smoke detector B and smoke detector C, subsequently setting off the smoke alarm A sound in smoke detector B and smoke detector C. The advantage lies in alerting the residents to where the smoke originates. Furthermore, a temperature threshold (125F) is implemented with the purpose to avoid false alarms in cases of minor smoke (cooking, incense, etc.). For instance, in the case of a fire, the temperature threshold alarm is set off (with priority status that is determined by the microcontroller) after the smoke alarm to warn the residents of the fire. In cases of minor smoke, only the smoke alarm is set off, as the temperature threshold has not been reached. This serves to avoid any confusion between minor smoke and a fire. The temperature alarm functions similarly to the smoke alarm, in the sense that each detector is assigned its own temperature alarm and is also capable of producing the exact alarm of the other detectors; this allows residents to know where the fire originates. The temperature alarm sound of the detector is the same as the smoke alarm sound of the detector but at a higher volume.