Supervision and Regulation of Home Automation Systems with Smartphones

Home automation and building services systems are integrated in many homes and buildings to meet the needs of comfort, security and efficiency of the customers. On the other hand, mobile devices such as handheld devices and smart phones are providing location-independent access to the Internet and local networks. This paper describes the requirements to combine these two mediums to supervise home automation systems with smart phones. It presents the design and implementation of an iPhone application that allows the retrofitting of mobile devices into an existing KNX home automation system without the need of specific hardware or skilled technicians. An approach to use configuration files, which arise during the installation of KNX home automation systems, for the initial setup of the mobile application is discussed.