Portfolio

A little more about myself.

	Dessel
	2000
	Belgian
	My Curriculum Vitae
	lian.aarts@icloud.com

I'm Lian, a 22-year-old graduating student at the IT-factory in Geel. Before Thomas More, I was a student at the technical institute Sint-Paulus in the field of electronics and electricity. This is why I chose to pursue a degree in the Internet of Things.

Technical service Center Parcs

Outside of school, I work at Center Parcs Europe. As a member of the technical service, I am responsible for the maintenance of 460 cottages and the infrastructure of the subtropical pool. Here I can apply my knowledge of electricity. Customer satisfaction is also of utmost importance while working in the leisure industry.

Hobbies and interests

My passion for electronics doesn't stop after work hours. 3D modeling is an important skill I learned that perfectly compliments my electronics projects. With the use of a 3D printer, I can translate my ideas into physical objects.

Study & development of a mesh network of environmental sensors

The Université de Bordeaux is the largest university campus in Europe and welcomes 56.000 students every day. Thanks to the Erasmus program I had the opportunity to travel to Bordeaux and do my internship at the informatics department of the university.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, air quality became very relevant. With a pending law that would require all educational institutes to install air quality sensors in every classroom, the project was formed. With the deployment of the mesh network the university would be able to conform to this law in a costly manner. All the sensor data is visualized and available to anyone who needs this information.

Because of the size of the building, it is impossible to set up a centralized solution as is the case for most home automation systems. Moreover, the Wi-Fi infrastructure provided by the university cannot be used due to security reasons. Therefore, we implemented an autonomous mesh network.

The project was divided into three main parts. Every part needed to be researched and developed. First, a suitable sensor had to be selected. Then the sensor modules had to be developed using a mesh infrastructure. And finally, we had to visualize the measurements of these sensors in a suitable dashboard.

During this project, I was working alongside my classmate. I was responsible for the following parts:

Research of the sensors
Development of the mesh node
Installation guide of the server
Printed circuit board
3D print and design of the enclosure

Follow the links below for more details:

The inclusion of drone technology in search and rescue operations has greatly decreased the time required to locate missing persons. However, the time required to physically reach missing persons has gone unchanged. For missing persons, time is of the essence. The more time the person spends exposed to the environment or injury the less of a chance those people have of surviving. We developed a device that can be dropped from a drone to a missing person's location to provide location data and communication while waiting for search and rescue personnel to arrive. We decided to focus on a use case at sea.

In this project, I was mainly responsible for:

3D printing and design
Hardware and schematic

Everyone likes to have plants at home. Not only is it beautiful, but it is also healthy. The disadvantage, is you have to maintain the plants, water them, do not leave them in the sun too much, etc. This is quickly forgotten.

That is why we came up with a solution that allows you to properly maintain your plants without having to do much yourself. we designed a smart flower pot with various sensors to be able to monitor the plant properly and water it automatically.

In this project, I was mainly responsible for:

3D printing and design
Hardware and schematic

Full project report

Inetum-Realdolmen has recently attached a Smart Box to the front of their facility in Kontich. A smart camera has been built into this module and the company hopes this will provide new insights. The camera is focused on the parking lot, the large road that runs in front of the company, and the associated bicycle path. Inetum-Realdolmen hopes to analyze the images from this camera and extract useful information such as:

Is it busy to get to work?
Is there still parking available?
Do many people come by bicycle?

The smart box will analyze the camera images and convert them into data that we can display. The dashboard will display the number of free parking spaces, traffic on the road, and air quality. We will also design the sensors for measuring air quality.

In this project, I was mainly responsible for the air quality sensor and the azure cloud.

De Waaiburg is an organization for Special Youth Care in the center of Geel with departments in Mol and Herentals. This non-profit organization supports young people and their families. To strengthen the bond between children and their families the organization wanted to create an escape room that would encourage cooperation between each other. We designed four individual puzzles that could be used together or separately.

In this project, everyone was responsible for a puzzle. This included:

3D printing and design
Hardware and schematic
Software

For my thesis in high school, I decided to build a home automation system based on open-source software. I used a Raspberry Pi and a couple of microcontrollers to automate my room. This is where my passion for home automation started. This is still a system I use and maintain daily. The system is in constant evolution, a perfect home automation setup does not exist. I use multiple different technologies like Zigbee and Z-wave, MQTT, and REST API.

Everything is run locally, there is no connection to the cloud. Everything can also be accessed through Apple Homekit.