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A toilet set with UVC LEDs radiating 275 nm for sterilization is presented. A visible indication and a proximity detection to warn and protect users from being hurt by the UVC radiation are also included. The sterilization of the toilet seat begins whenever the toilet lid lays down well on the seat. The condition is detected and confirmed by a coordination of a reed switch and a power magnet. The sterilization will last for an expected time, six minutes in a prototype toilet set. If it is interrupted, the proposed safety measures will take over the operation of the sterilization.

Developing visible-light communication (VLC) with easy-to-use circuit modules in order to be integrated with consumer electronics could facilitate VLC technology adopted in more wireless applications for home. The study first implements functions of lighting for reading and data transmitting with a white organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel. A method to keep the two functions implemented on the same lighting panel from interfering with each other is proposed and investigated. For data transmission, an optical receiver working with the OLED-based data transmitter to organize an optical channel is also proposed with a cost-effective approach based on a mature infrared receiver module. Under the recommended illuminance of 500 lux for reading and office work, home devices can receive codes in 2404 bps with the low-cost and convenient optical channel.

A convenient and economical optical channel for wireless control in the space for residents is carried out with the beam from light-emitting diodes (LEDs) while they are working for illumination. In theory, optical wireless technology can be implemented with lower cost and consumes lower power than those done by radio. However, optical communication is usually found applied in infrared. In the study, the white light of a LED lamp with the intensity for home illumination is considered to build an optical channel for wireless control of home devices. To be convenient and economical, the mature infrared technology is employed. Although data bits can only move within the channel in 2500 bps at most, the hardware to receive them is compact and cheap enough to be included in consumer electronics.

This study optimizes the lighting of 38 LED chips connected in series with 14 switches to bypass parts of them according to the alternating voltage level across the LED string. Furthermore, the illumination produced by the light will not become unstable while the light is used as binary signals at the same time, to transmit data by controlling another switch.

Owing to AC LED can be driven directly without any AC to DC converter, the volume and the cost of AC LED can be reduced. Avoiding the power conversion loss, AC LED can have lower energy consumption and higher luminous efficiency than DC LED does. Because of high brightness, low power consumption and long lifetime, LED has been used as a lighting device and is expected to replace the high power-consuming incandescent and fluorescent lamps in the 21th century, in consequence the white light AC LED is a better choice for general illumination in the future. In this study, a white light AC LED smart lighting system equipped with visible light time-division multiplexing optical communication for free space is proposed. In the system, the timing to transmit data is synchronized with the period of the AC power on the wall, in order to keep the transmitted optical signal in an enough level. As a result, the time-division multiplexing optical communication by AC LED lighting is achieved.

The work attempts to reduce the power consumption of a personal computer (PC)-based server of an Internet-based data acquisition system using a novel server agent. An Internet-based data acquisition system requires at least one PC as the central server. The system needs to be run for a long time. If few data are transferred, the server stays at an almost idle state. However, keeping the server running without doing anything wastes power. Reducing this unnecessary power consumption by a PC-based server and further reducing the power consumption of an entire system are the goals of this work. This work is based on a microcontroller-based device. The novel microcontroller-based device in this work is called a Server Agent. This agent receives data from clients while the original PC-based server is off. After the amount of data transferred exceeds a certain limit, the Server Agent powers on the PC-based server and dumps the data to the PC-based server. The Server Agent will power off the PC-based server again once all data are dumped. The power consumed by the Server Agent is