3 ms·

Sounds super similar to some of the research out of (The University of Washington UbiComp Lab)[http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/ http://ubicompl

Sounds super similar to some of the research out of (The University of Washington UbiComp Lab)[http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/ http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/] back in 2010. There was a project led by Shwetak Patel, that ultimately turned into (Zensi)[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zensi https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zensi]. Basic premise was to use some DSP to detect electrical noise emitted via various appliances and extract usage patterns from this. The same approach could then be used for water and gas systems by detecting pressure, rather than voltage fluctuations. From what I can tell this seems to have now just been consumed into the depths of Belkin.

staticfloat 9y ago
Amazingly, I can actually speak to this. I'm Ph.D. student in Shwetak Patel's lab, and yes, this looks to be extremely similar to the ElectriSense [1] work done by Sidhant Gupta (now at Microsoft Research). The water analogue was Eric Larson's Ph.D. work, and was much more difficult from a DSP perspective due to two separate issues: * When water is flowing without turbulence (laminar flow) it doesn't leave much of a signature on flow or pressure sensors * Any kind of signature that does exist is often changed significantly depending on the network of pipes that stand between the single point sensor and the source of the water event. For these two reasons it took a while for us to work out a high enough accuracy for the water stuff (in the end we used a water pressure sensor plugged in close to your water heater as a fairly central point that most people can access easily) and that was published as HydroSense [2]. We like our *Sense names. :P HydroSense was indeed bought up by Belkin, and they are pushing it forward in a way that we just cannot do in academia, so that's a good thing. ElectriSense I don't remember exactly what the IP status of it is, but I do know at least one student was working on some interesting extensions of it that may be published in the next year. [1] http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/electrisense/ http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/electrisens... [2] http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/a-longitudinal/ http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/a-longitudi...

staticfloat 9y ago

Amazingly, I can actually speak to this. I'm Ph.D. student in Shwetak Patel's lab, and yes, this looks to be extremely similar to the ElectriSense [1] work done by Sidhant Gupta (now at Microsoft Research). The water analogue was Eric Larson's Ph.D. work, and was much more difficult from a DSP perspective due to two separate issues: * When water is flowing without turbulence (laminar flow) it doesn't leave much of a signature on flow or pressure sensors * Any kind of signature that does exist is often changed significantly depending on the network of pipes that stand between the single point sensor and the source of the water event. For these two reasons it took a while for us to work out a high enough accuracy for the water stuff (in the end we used a water pressure sensor plugged in close to your water heater as a fairly central point that most people can access easily) and that was published as HydroSense [2]. We like our *Sense names. :P HydroSense was indeed bought up by Belkin, and they are pushing it forward in a way that we just cannot do in academia, so that's a good thing. ElectriSense I don't remember exactly what the IP status of it is, but I do know at least one student was working on some interesting extensions of it that may be published in the next year. [1] http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/electrisense/ http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/electrisens... [2] http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/a-longitudinal/ http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/publications/a-longitudi...