France's Epita Team Develops Smart-House Technology.

PARIS -- Four students of EPITA University in Paris have designed an award-winning smart-house technology that would have appliances respond to your commands, even when you are away, and dramatically increase the security of your home or office.

EPITA, a college specializing in IT studies, is part of IONIS, France's largest private university group.

EPITA students Aymeric Gaurat Apelli, Francois Beaussier, Guillaume Belmas and Vincent Vergonjeanne won Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2004 technology award for software design on July 6 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The year-long competition involved more than 10,000 students from 90 countries. Other awards were for short film, rendering and algorithm.

The French winning team leveraged Microsoft .NET Framework and Web services technology to create a system that responds to your commands via your smart-phone or PDA. The Web-based concept uses the X10 protocol that allows consumers and businesses to transmit information via the home's or the office's electric wiring. Specific modules allocated to the various appliances are remotely activated via web access.

For instance, if you feel you are catching a cold, you can instruct your heater to turn up the temperature before you get back home with a simple call. If someone enters your office after hours, the system will notify you via cellular phone or wireless e-mail of the intrusion. The range of possibilities is as broad and diversified as the number of home or office appliances. This includes activating cameras on demand for a quick glimpse of what is going on at home or in your business while you are away.

"I am proud that our students won Microsoft's prestigious Imagine Cup award in a competition with so many bright contenders from around the world," said EPITA managing director Fabrice Bardeche.

"Being able to leverage the potential of the Net will change the world in many ways. That's what we are preparing our students for. They will help develop applications that will change the way we live and work," Bardeche also said.

Beaussier and his teammates have already joined EPITA's Institute of IT Innovation for Enterprise (3IE), a consultancy that provides IT solutions for the enterprise. The winning team will help develop new applications to help answer specific business challenges.

EPITA and Epitech are colleges specializing in IT and are part of the IONIS Group. The private university group also includes ISEG business school, ISG institute for international studies and IPSA school for air and space technology. More than 1,200 companies representing a range of sectors are employing EPITA graduates in France and abroad today.