Microcontroller Based Smart Home System with Enhanced Appliance Switching Capacity

This paper introduces a low-cost android application (app) controlled smart home system that can remotely switch on/off as many as 208 appliances using only 4 digital pins of an ATmega328 microcontroller based Arduino UNO board. The appliance switching system requires approximately 70% less wiring cost for real life installation in home compared to the similar conventional systems. Moreover, the smart home system includes: (1) automatic night light that only lights up at night if it detects any human in the close proximity; (2) `Outside Mode' that turns off every single appliance connected to the system with a touch from android app when user leaves the home; (3) a smart security system that sounds an alarm, sends message and makes call to the user using GSM module if it detects any intrusion in the house. The android application provides a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) to send command to the microcontroller via Bluetooth. Compared to the products available in market, cost of the proposed system is cheaper to a great extent.