Shukan Bhakta and Luis Villegas

Guiding Question: How can we prevent accidental electrocution from faulty, poorly designed electrical outlets?

We have worked together side by side to develop what we call the SmartPlug for our Capstone Project. The SmartPlug was an idea that arose from the safety hazard and electrocution that can happen due to electrical outlets. The current design of the outlet and the plug itself are the reason why we decided to look deeper and think outside of the box to develop and redesign an outlet that will not sacrifice power efficiency but will increase safety. On the plug end of our project, our SmartPlug design has a semi insulated strip that will cause a voltage drop. On the outlet, the SmartPlug has a diode and an integrated circuit breaker. The outlet will have power once the diode detects a valid plug that has the semi insulated strip thus following the key and lock concept. In other words the outlet is powerless until the custom prongs are plugged, turning on the plug and transferring the power. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]