Smart Home Based on IoT - Architecture and Practices

The emergence of IoT technology gives much more options for connectivity and intelligence to home appliances. The development of a web-based system for a smart home as a part of an IoT ecosystem gives the ability to control and view different items such as lightning, household appliances, computers, etc. via the Internet, regardless of the user's location. The basic functions that a smart home system should have are security, comfort and convenience, health care, energy consumption and efficiency, and indoor and outdoor care. The smart home is based on the usage of smart appliances and devices and an IoT infrastructure with sensors and controllers, all paired with an application that should have the following functions: alert, monitoring, control and management, and intelligence. This paper proposes a conceptual model for the design and development of an experimental system with four-tier architecture. The first tier consists of the hardware components (sensors, controllers, switches). The second tier is business logic - a software program on a microcomputer or microcontroller, used for communication with the hardware components, as well as to send the data to a server. The third tier is responsible for data management - usually, this is a server or a cloud solution that stores the data in a database. The fourth tier is also software-related and is responsible for the user-interactive part of the whole smart-home system. The graphical interface, with which the user interacts is on this tier, as well as the main business logic of the system, the decision-making rules, and the connection with third-party apps and APIs.