Home automation system using Arduino

Abstract

The necessity to control and/or monitor the various devices installed in a house with a simple press of a button, over an intuitive user interface, is increasing. In order to achieve this all the devices must use one technology, which many times is proprietary. This might not be compatible with a device a user purchases after the initial setup or costly to maintain after this setup. Adding another standard will incur additional installation and maintenance costs because the user will need to use another interface to control the device and the purpose of a unified control system is lost. This may discourage the dwellers to implement such a system in their houses. Many commercial and government funded projects have attempted to create a simple and effective home automation system. Standards like X10, Smart House, Consumer Electronics Bus, European Home System, C-Bus and Lonworks have been developed. They are mainly based on fixed wire-technologies making them difficult to deploy once the house is in a liveable condition or difficult to expand once installed. X10 are currently providing some wireless automation devices but are limited to wireless security cameras, wireless door bells and switches. The easiest system that scales up nicely is the European Home System as it uses power line communication, which allows expansion if a power plug is available next to the new or relocated device. This protocol is now part of KNX technology. Unfortunately, none of these systems provide means to communicate with different home systems. Undoubtedly this will hinder the development of the home automation market. In the wireless sector, the two prevailing technologies are HomeRF and Bluetooth. HomeRF research was supported by over 100 companies including Philips and Siemens but was forced to obsolescence with new emerging technologies like 802.11 b and Bluetooth wireless technology v1.0. The 802.11 standard was been developed to replace wired networks [...].