MorSocket: An Expandable IoT-Based Smart Socket System

Due to the flourishing development of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, many smart home applications have become commercially available. One of the most popular applications is remotely controlled smart sockets. Most commercial smart socket products allow the user to control single-sockets. This paper proposes a smart socket system called MorSocket (“more sockets”) that allows the user to control multiple separated sockets within a control webpage. These sockets share the same wireless communication module and therefore the hardware cost of MorSocket is lower than the single-socket solutions. Furthermore, by integrating MorSensor with an IoT management platform called IoTtalk, MorSocket can be automatically controlled by arbitrary sensors for temperature, humidity, UV, CO2, and so on. Such configuration is easily and flexibly set up through the IoTtalk GUI without extra programming efforts. We also develop the MorSensor system that provides multiple configurable sensors tailored to control MorSocket through simple plug-and-play. Then we investigate the user tolerance delay between when the user presses the on/off button and when he/she presses the next time if MorSocket does not respond. The user experience is poor if the MorSocket access delay is longer than the tolerance delay, and the user may keep pressing the button. We conduct measurements, analytic modeling, and simulation experiments to study the impact of the user tolerance delay. Our study observes the quick response of MorSocket, which results in excellent user experience.