Thermal Sensor based Human Presence Detection for Smart Home Application

Electrical appliances are one of the most important necessities in the modern world. With the advancement of technologies, modern electrical appliances can accomplish various tasks effectively for the convenient and comfort of human life. However, with the increase in the number of household appliances since the past few decades, the demand for residential electrical energy has consistently in the increasing trend. To prevent energy wastage, it is desirable to have a smart control system that can automatically turn off the appliances that are not in use. In this paper, an intelligent electrical appliance control system is proposed to control the switching of household appliances based on the detection of human presence. Instead of using a pyroelectric (PIR) sensor which is commonly used for human motion detection, this system uses a thermal sensor which is also able to detect stationary human and provide accurate location of human in the detection area. A calibration method is introduced to determine the proper temperature threshold for effective human detection. In the proposed system, the detection area of the sensor is divided into several sections. Based on the human detection result, the switching of the appliances in each section can be individually controlled. Test on the implemented prototype showed that the proposed system is able to detect human presence in different sections of the monitored area and control the switching of the electrical appliances. The system is thus has the potential to prevent wastage of electrical energy by automatically turning off the unnecessary appliances such as lighting or fans when human is not presence.