2.

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

In the recent years, home automation has become a critical requirement for a house

owner in the effort to keep the house safe. Thus, Home Automation System (HAS) has become a

center of interest for researchers in an attempt to enforce a system and create some gradates that

enhance security in the home and keep away intruders. From another perception, HAS has

enabled the capability of controlling electrical appliances at home as well as monitoring various

activities of the household. One benefit that comes along with home automation system is that it

improves the lifestyle associated with controlling home devices, and it provides this function

with ease, comfort, and in a way which is convenient to the user hence to some extent it is

important to consider some amount of degree intelligence and complexity affiliated with the

system. Using the HAS technology, it is possible for a user to control appliances such as lighting,

other electrical appliances, dimming among others.

2.2 Literature survey

Sougata Das and colleagues [1] gives a description of the design and development

affiliated with HAS as a system which is initiated through the use of a cellphone to control

household appliances through a global system for communication in mobile (GSM) technology.

With this system, the user can control and monitor appliances of the home through using a

mobile phone that sends commands in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) while at the

same time providing the present condition of the appliances. This system uses wireless

technology to control appliances thus it is effective in controlling appliances where unwired

connection is required. The figure below gives a presentation of a block diagram of the system.
 A figure showing block diagram of HAS [1]

The system works on the principle that the user sends a text message through the GSM network.

Upon receiving the message, GSM sends the message to the ATMEGA8 microcontroller through

a serial port that utilizes internal UART ATMEGA8 module [2]. The microcontroller maintains

the polling to see if nay text message has reached the modem and in any case, there is a message;

a command is then sent to the modem to transmit the message received after GSM and

ATMEGA8 provide communication via a special command referred to as AT COMMAND

SET.' Action required is then decoded in relation to the SMS sent through search and match

technique that involves a look-up table developed with a command set and the corresponding

actions.

Sweatha, Poornima, and colleagues [3] demonstrated a novel technology that showed

how a user could control the home devices by just using a cell phone. In the system, they

described, there was field programmable gate array (FPGA) as a controller in which the device is

interfaced directly as they communicate to FPGA from the cell phone with the utilization of the

speech recognition technique as showed in the figure below portraying the block diagram of the

system they proposed.

 Block diagram of the proposed system [3]

This proposed system comprised four blocks: the first block is the interface for the Bluetooth

which links up the phone and the PIC microcontroller. In the second block is the mobile device

used for speech recognition and it must encompass a Bluetooth module. In the third block, there

is the PIC controller used to receive data from Bluetooth and in the last block are the devices to

be controlled and monitored. These devices are attached to the FPGA depending on the

availability of free input and output ports the FPGA has. Regarding the working of the system,

first of all, the Android as mentioned earlier is used for speech recognition. The speech and then

converted to a text and transmitted to the module containing the Bluetooth through utilization of

the Bluetooth technology. The signal upon being received by the Bluetooth is then transmitted to

the PIC microcontroller using the UART. This data is then converted to a digital form using PIC

microcontroller and is then transmitted in a parallel to the FPGA controller. The devices are

directly connected to FPGA controller and then controlling is done according to the data.

In another work, Vijay P. Jadhao [4] presents an automation system from the perspectives

of ARM that has the capabilities of monitoring and controlling the appliances of a given

household thereby making it possible for them to initiate a successful communication with

unknown individuals. According to him, such a system not only enhances smart home

automation, but also it provides an enhanced communication system which has the capabilities of

communicating with unknown individuals visiting the home. In this technology, the first phase
involved the Smart Home Automation follows the commands received from the mobile phone of

the user and present conditions required for sensing, system of microcontroller system that sent

signals via the ports to either switch on/off the appliances such as light, fan, siren and so forth.

The second phase presented an integration of features that were to be used in the establishment

of a successful communication with unknown individuals visiting the home. The phase involved

utilized a doorbell switch that acted as a mediator in case no one was at home. After some delay,

there would be the establishment of a call via a cell phone to the user to provide him /her with an

opportunity to create communication and prevent any losses incurred due to lack of contact. This

research inferred that ARM LPC-2148 microcontroller together with a cellphone could be

utilized in making smart home automation.

In another research by Bulbul and R. Swarnalatha [5], there is a presentation of smart

home automation system which involves using AVR microcontroller. This system integrates

microcontroller, sensors, and Bluetooth module to give an automation ability to several

appliances of the household activities. A microcontroller of AVR provides a higher performance

and flexibility which is used in controlling several appliances. Such a system can monitor

alterations in temperature, identify fire, provide lighting, and maintain a check regarding the

safety of the house.

Elsewhere, Manish Kumar and Ramandeep Singh gave a presentation involving home

automation standards particularly using ZIGBEE [6]. This involved controlling home appliances

such as fridge, air conditioner, fan, and so forth wirelessly through the use of a computer and

ZIGBEE wireless protocol communication. This involved sending a command via the computer

as showed in the block diagram of ZigBee home-based appliance controller.

 A figure is presenting ZigBee home-based appliance controller [6].

In the implementation part of it, all the appliances are connected to the microcontroller via a

relay and the command is sent via the hyper terminal software or what is referred to as X-CTU.

In the embedded system, the transmitter comprises ZigBee transmitter and a circuit of RS232

while the receiver contains ZigBee and ATMEGA128 that is connected using the relay and the

appliance. In the implementation of the system, there must be a Wi-Fi network. A home gateway

is then developed to provide interoperations required by these networks while focusing on some

aspect of security. Following an example presented in the following diagram, it is worth noting

that four devices namely light switch, the valve of the radiator and safety sensor as well as the

remote controller of ZigBee had been created and incorporated into the HAS as shown below

A figure showing the system

implentation for ZigBee [7]
The light switch in the system was incorporated in the ZigBee controller as portrayed in the

figure. This was to be used in detecting the current status of the light system that is whether on or

off adjust the state as deemed fit. Next device was the prototype automatic radiator that also

incorporated into the ZigBee microcontroller. This valve could be controlled remotely and

manually since they are conventional valves. Finally, there is the safety sensor that has particular

characteristics of interest. For example, different from other devices, the safety sensor has to

monitor continuously the conditions surrounding it a give feedback as deemed fit. This reduces

the operational time especially in the sleep mode, thus considerably minimizing the life of the

battery. With reference to this implementation, a sensor was developed to assess the viability of

the system using a mass market device that placed a large demand on the resources of the

system. This sensor inculcated safety regarding temperature, flame, smoke sensors, and Carbon

monoxide [7].

Conclusively, home automation system has become critical in this new era of the 21st

century in the pursuit to advance the home system and can be used to monitor any application

remotely. Various components can be used to control several home appliances that range from

security lights, TV, air conditioning, and so forth. Much research has been done regarding HAS,

and it has been proved that the system can be implemented using Infrared and WAP apart from

Bluetooth without mush interference to the design and still be able to control the home

appliances remotely. This means that this system is flexible and scalable too.
 References

[1] S. Das, N. Debabhuti, R. Das, S. Dutta and A. Ghosh, "Embedded system for home

automation using SMS," 2014 First International Conference on Automation, Control,

Energy and Systems (ACES), 2014.

[2] S. Kapil and N. Chauhan, Providing Online Home Security and Control of Home Appliances

using Android Application, 3rd ed. Delhi, India: Krishi Sanskriti, 2016.

[3] K. Sweatha, M. Poornima, M. Vinutha and M. Poornima, "ADVANCE HOME

AUTOMATION USING FPGA CONTROLLER," International Journal of Advanced

Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, vol. 2, no. 7, pp. 2680-2682,

2013.

[4] V. Jadhao, "ARM-based Smart Home Automation," International Journal of Science and

Engineering, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 53-56, 2013.

[5] B. Bhaskar and R. Swarnalatha, "SMART HOME AUTOMATION SYSTEM USING AVR

MICROCONTROLLER," International Journal of Advanced Technology in Engineering

and Science, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 234-242, 2015.

[6] M. Kumar and R. Singh, "HOME APPLIANCE CONTROLLING USING ZIGBEE ON

ATMEGA128 HARDWARE PLATFORM", International Journal of Research in

Engineering and Technology, vol. 3, no. 7, pp. 469-472, 2014.

[7] K. Gill, S. Yang, F. Yao and X. Lu, "A ZigBee-based home automation system," IEEE

Transactions on Consumer Electronics, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 422-430, 2009.