Arduino Based Home Automation Control Powered by Photovoltaic Cells

Home Automation is one of the most sought after area of development in the electronics sector. It has the advantage of no interaction of humans with the devices, and it usually requires another power source to power itself. In standard scenarios, a DC battery is used to power the microcontroller which is used for automation. With constant inclusion of smart energy systems to automate home appliances, this paper proposes a home automation system which is capable of powering the circuits on its own by means of photovoltaic cells and energizing the required set of loads wirelessly. Contrary to conventional methods, the proposed system employs a cascaded photovoltaic cell to energize an Arduino board which aids in automating the system. The Arduino upon wireless input feeds the relays which would activate or deactivate the required load. A hardware prototype of the proposed system is realized and validated successfully.