Improvisation of smart home automation using hybrid sources

The evolution of technology and lifestyle in the past few decades has led to an immense change in technological as well as social front. Digitalization has taken over the world due to an easy control and accessibility to smartphones. It has led to a technology dependent automatic world ready to adapt to a precision and accuracy based labor-free system. Automation along with widely used smartphones plays an important role in the commencement of Smart Home Automation. On the other hand, exponential increase in demand for electricity due to urbanization has led to drastic decrease in the non-renewable resources and increase in greenhouse gases. This coerced the scientists to opt for easily available and cost efficient renewable resources. Smart home Automation when merged with renewable resource as co-generating system, will not only reduce human labor but will also contribute towards betterment of the environment. This paper focuses on a reliable, low cost and efficient Hybrid Smart Home Automation (HSHA) system for controlling as well as monitoring the loads. Wireless controlling and monitoring of loads is done using a smartphone via an android application. The android application has features such as password protection, availability of different modes of operation, real-time power monitoring and controlling the loads using switch or voice control. An android based controller circuit is built which serves as an intermediate platform between the user and the relay system. For wireless communication, Bluetooth module is used due to its flexibility and relays for quick and methodical control of loads. A real-time prototype of the proposed system is designed for 1 kilo-watt household system and the experimental results are presented for different loads and modes of operation.

I. Introduction

In earlier days, Home Automation System focused on control of loads remotely using telephone sets and telephone network [1]. Initially Personal Computers (PC's) along with the telephone network were used for the purpose of home automation with communication platform of Dual Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF) signals, which were then replaced by an electronic control circuit consisting of microcontrollers and logic circuits, specially designed for home automation system. In this upgraded system, the control circuit was capable of driving and controlling different home appliances efficiently. In later phase, few researchers developed a wireless LAN based home automation system which transmitted video data, could control the appliances using Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) technology via its own website and was also furnished with anti-theft alarming system with DTMF technology [1]. With the invention of mobile technology in 1980's, researchers developed a home automation system based on Short Message Service (SMS) technology by using a GSM modem which served as an interface and also information exchange platform between the system and the user. But these technologies had their own advantages and disadvantages which were later tackled using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi based systems, thus leading to Smart Home automation systems [1]. The concept of Smart Home Automation was developed in 1984 by American Association of House Builders [2]. The main idea behind the Smart Home Automation system was fully automated, easy and well managed control of loads in order to bring ease in the life of the user [2].