Project Description
The HomeLab project was started around 2000. The goal was to build an advanced laboratory that could be used to conduct feasibility and usability studies in Ambient Intelligence. After two years of design and construction, HomeLab was opened on April 2002. The opening event marked the start of the Ambient Intelligence research in HomeLab.

The infrastructure of the HomeLab consists of around 35 videocameras, microphones in any of the 10 rooms, monitoring equipment for observation and recording equipment to analyse experiments. MiPlaza was contracted to build the HomeLab Control System (HCS) which would make the infrastructure available in such a way that researchers could use it with no or with minimal training.
The HCS consists of a frontend with applications through which the researchers access the infrastructure and several backend servers controlling individual components like routing equipment and recording systems. An analysis tool, run at the researchers own desktop, gives access to the recorded material and helps analyse the experiments. Most of the system is running on Windows 2000/XP system and written in C++. Some parts are written in Java and a few servers are running Linux.