The School of EECS (formerly SITE) Students Place Second in the IEEE Student Oral Papers Competition

April 13, 2011

Students Jacob Swart, Patrick Santos, and Matthew Young, who form the WiGEM project group, received second place at the 2011 IEEE Eastern Ontario Student Oral Papers Competition, held at Queens University on March 30th 2011.

Their paper, entitled “Wireless Integrated Growth Environment Monitor (WiGEM)”, was based on their work related to wireless sensor networks and web interfaces, as well as the testing performed in the University of Ottawa’s greenhouses.

Jacob Swart, the leader of the WiGEM project group, presented the paper at the University of Ottawa’s IEEE Student Branch and advanced to the regional competition held at Queens University.  There were four other institutions represented at the competition: Algonquin College, Carleton University, Queens University, and Royal Military College of Canada (RMC).

The competition recognizes student engineering projects and similar undertakings. Students must have a 15 minute oral presentation, followed by a question and answer period. This year, $600 of total prize money was up for grabs. The University of Ottawa placed second among the entrants, winning a $150 prize.

WiGEM was the project completed by the three the School of EECS (formerly SITE) students for their computer engineering capstone design project. It was designed as a complete greenhouse and green roof wireless monitoring and automation solution. The WiGEM system is made up of wireless sensor nodes, an on-site base station computer, and a remote server. The sensor nodes transmit soil moisture, humidity, sunlight, and temperature readings to a base station and server for storage and processing. Users can retrieve readings and customize the growth environment automation parameters through a web interface. The system can also activate devices within the environment or generate e-mail and SMS text alerts if the system detects values which are outside of user-set limits. Since the system was designed to be modular, it can also be easily adapted to monitor other environments.

The WiGEM project group thanks project supervisors Dr. Emil Petriu and Dr. Pierre Payeur, biology professor Dr. Douglas Johnson and greenhouse operator Ms. Huguette Allard for access to the biosciences greenhouses, and Patrick Hunter for his work in researching database structures and technologies.

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