Intelligent home automation system

Abstract

As the availability of fossil fuels has been decreasing over time, the world has been put under pressure to reduce its reliability on driving electricity by burning fossil fuels. One way of achieving this is to manage our consumption in a way that limits excess use and waste. This thesis is targeted at achieving just that by providing the consumer with: i) A website that allows the user to see the electrical status of electrical devices in the household and be able to control them online also ii) A system that produces graphical representations of the amount of power consumed over time of particularly common devices/appliances found in a household The first part of this thesis is executed by producing a small scale model of the electrical system of a house that is connected to a central microcontroller. By exploiting the functionality of the relay, this part of the system is built by dedicating two relays connected as a two-way switch in order for the user to have manual access to the first switch and remote access to the second switch. The second part of this thesis involves the monitoring of power consumption using two approaches. The first approach entails the use of a monitoring device having an in-built screen that displays values of voltage, current and power as drawn by the appliance that is attached to it. In tum, the monitoring device is connected to an electrical socket. The second approach involves a system that is built around the same microcontroller used in the first part of this thesis. The microcontroller is connected in a circuit that acquires data from a current sensor whose output depends on the amount of current flowing through the live wire connected to the device in question and passing through the solid core of the sensor.