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SmartHome4SENIORS Portal

The SmartHome4SENIORS project

The core theme of the project is to offer innovative training assets to senior citizens fostering hands-on educational learning. Furthermore, the project aims to offer innovative digital resources and tools that can be used to assist and safeguard senior citizens in cases of distant living and during the difficult times of COVID-19. These resources are essential for every European country and represent one of the core values of the European Union.

The SmartHome4SENIORS project has developed:

  • Educational content related to Smart Home solutions and the Internet of Things
  • An online learning environment divided into theoretical and practical parts
  • A DIY Smart Home Kit, powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico to enable experimentation with several easy to install smart home solutions.

These resources were developed to guide seniors into the world of DIY smart home automation solutions to ease their everyday lives and increase their safety. At the same time, seniors will learn new skills or enhance existing ones in the fields of electronics, programming, problem-solving and critical thinking. Seniors will learn how to build and configure DIY electronic kits to create smart home solutions and implement them in a wooden house model, while at the same time they will learn how to program and control inputs/outputs from smart sensors and how to adapt them to their specific needs.

Instructions to the users

Create an account via the Log In option at the top left of the page. Then click on “Create new account” and fill in the required information.You will need a valid e-mail address to be able to confirm your account. After filling in all information, click on the “Create new account” orange button. A welcome message with further instructions has been sent to your e-mail account.
Please follow the instructions there and set your password. Click on the “Save” button. Your account is ready and you can now browse the content of the SmartHome4SENIORS Portal. You can also change the language by clicking on the earth icon in the top right of the page.
The Portal is divided into two main parts:

  • Theory, which contains theoretical knowledge related to Smart Home, the Internet of Things, Physical Computing, and more.
  • Practice, which contains a series of tutorials that will guide you into setting and controlling several Smart Home DIY devices on the SmartHome model.

Happy learning!

Theoretical Part

The theoretical part (Theory) of the SmartHome4SENIORS Portal is presented in a learning motivation environment in the form of activities. There are 3 modules and 21 topics in total, followed by an assessment quiz. Don’t worry, the quiz’s purpose is to validate your knowledge and offer you feedback. You can try the quiz as many times as you want.

We recommend you to start from the beginning and browse through all topics, and then do the quiz before jumping into the practical part. You will need all this information later on. Each time you read a topic, make sure to click on the “Mark the topic if you have read it” button at the end of the page so you can keep track on which topics you have already learnt.

Happy reading!

Practical Part

The practical part (Practice) of the SmartHome4SENIORS Portal contains 10 tutorials that will guide you to create and control several Smart Home systems such as automatic doors, smart lights, smart security systems, etc. To implement the tutorials, you will need all the knowledge you acquired in the theoretical part, plus the SmartHome Kit and your computer.

The tutorials are described in 7 steps, so by following each step you will be getting closer to the creation of a fully functional DIY smart home automation system. Make sure to read each step carefully, and pay extra attention to the parts that require you to connect electronics and code. Some of our more “advanced” tutorials include also instructional videos to help you understand and implement them.

You can also use the various filters which are found on the left of the page. These refer to the difficulty level and to the electronics and sensors that are included in the tutorials. For example, you may choose “Intermediate Level” tutorials which include a “Buzzer”, and a “Servo Motor”. Then the Tutorial list will be filtered out, showing you all tutorials that fall into your parameters.

Each time you finish with a tutorial, make sure to click on the “Mark activity as completed” button at the end of the page so you can receive a completion badge. You can find your acquired badges by clicking on “My Achievements” at the top of the page.

Happy hands-on learning!