Development of an Embedded Smart Home System

Smart home systems are expected to become key research area for ubiquitous and embedded system computing in coming years. In this thesis, a new scheme in smart home systems technology using embedded system for providing intelligent control of home appliances is proposed. An embedded system act as protocol glue that incorporates wired and wireless option such as Short Message Service (SMS) router with wireless local area network (WI-FI) for intelligent automation and higher speed of home appliances connectivity. The system is implemented in 2 tier models. First-tier model consist of incorporated design of SMS Router and Wireless Access Point. Wireless local area network (WI-FI) is selected as mechanism due to its transmission range within 100m which suits the smart home requirement for automation and control, justifies the Personal Area Network (PAN) for mobile device connectivity. Second tier model consist of remote application server systems, which cater a conceptual model between embedded hardware and software integration of appliances in smart home. This interface model will be between in house networks and external communication environment, whereas embedded system acts as storage media and server for information interchange between systems especially with mobile devices within a smart home. Embedded system sits at the core of the home network, acts as residential gateway and enables bi-directional communication and data transfer channel among networked appliances in the home and across the Internet. On the other hand, client-side application provides a user-friendly Graphic User Interface (GUI) to enhance the usability of the system. The proposed embedded system has been implemented and verified that the system can be a core device for smart home environment functionality

Iterative Model-based Identification of Building Components and Appliances by Means of Sensor-Actuator Networks

2nd Workshop on eeBuildings Data Models, CIB W078 ‐ W102, Sophia Antipolis ‐ FranceA key challenge for home/building automation applications, especially energy management, is to enable the indirect integration of legacy home/building appliances and building components that do not have a network connection to the home/building network, to make it possible to monitor and partially control them. We propose a mechanism and system for the iterative identification and self-configuration of these devices through a shared backplane of networked sensors and actuators available in the building. This makes it possible to integrate these devices and interface them through a software proxy as if they were state of the art networked devices, thus extending the range of the network and the associated middleware towards all kinds of physical entities of that make up the home/building. These entities are supposed to be described in a model repository and a domain-specific ontology. The matching of the entities being discovered in the home/building environment to these known models is done by analog pattern matching, instead of requiring an exact match as would be the case with a standard digital networks protocol, so that it lends itself to iterative approximation. The architecture and OSGi-based implementation of this system are described. Examples are provided for typical home appliances and other subsystems of the home/building that may be dealt with in a similar way

A Surface-based In-House Network Medium for Power, Communication and Interaction

Recent advances in communication and signal processing methodologies have paved the way for a high speed home network Power Line Communication (PLC) system. The development of powerline communications and powerline control as a cost effective and rapid mechanism for delivering communication and control services are becoming attractive in PLC application, to determine the best mix of hard and software to support infrastructure development for particular applications using power line communication. Integrating appliances in the home through a wired network often proves to be impractical: routing cables is usually difficult, changing the network structure afterwards even more so, and portable devices can only be connected at fixed connection points. Wireless networks aren’t the answer either: batteries have to be regularly replaced or changed, and what they add to the device’s size and weight might be disproportionate for smaller appliances. In Pin&Play, we explore a design space in between typical wired and wireless networks, investigating the use of surfaces to network objects that are attached to it. This article gives an overview of the network model, and describes functioning prototypes that were built as a proof of concept. The first phase of the development is already demonstrated both in appropriate conferences and publications. [1] The intention of researchers is to introduce this work to powerline community; as this research enters phase II of the Pin&Play architecture to investigate, develop prototype systems, and conduct studies in two concrete application areas. The first area is user-centric and concerned with support for collaborative work on large surfaces. The second area is focused on exhibition spaces and trade fairs, and concerned with combination of physical media such as movable walls and digital infrastructure for fast deployment of engaging installations. In this paper we have described the functionality of the Pin&Play architecture and introduced the second phase together with future plans. Figure 1 shows technical approach, using a surface with simple layered structure Pushpin connectors, dual pin or coaxial

Smart Microgrids: Overview and Outlook

The idea of changing our energy system from a hierarchical design into a set of nearly independent microgrids becomes feasible with the availability of small renewable energy generators. The smart microgrid concept comes with several challenges in research and engineering targeting load balancing, pricing, consumer integration and home automation. In this paper we first provide an overview on these challenges and present approaches that target the problems identified. While there exist promising algorithms for the particular field, we see a missing integration which specifically targets smart microgrids. Therefore, we propose an architecture that integrates the presented approaches and defines interfaces between the identified components such as generators, storage, smart and \dq{dumb} devices.Comment: presented at the GI Informatik 2012, Braunschweig Germany, Smart Grid Worksho

Integration of Legacy Appliances into Home Energy Management Systems

The progressive installation of renewable energy sources requires the coordination of energy consuming devices. At consumer level, this coordination can be done by a home energy management system (HEMS). Interoperability issues need to be solved among smart appliances as well as between smart and non-smart, i.e., legacy devices. We expect current standardization efforts to soon provide technologies to design smart appliances in order to cope with the current interoperability issues. Nevertheless, common electrical devices affect energy consumption significantly and therefore deserve consideration within energy management applications. This paper discusses the integration of smart and legacy devices into a generic system architecture and, subsequently, elaborates the requirements and components which are necessary to realize such an architecture including an application of load detection for the identification of running loads and their integration into existing HEM systems. We assess the feasibility of such an approach with a case study based on a measurement campaign on real households. We show how the information of detected appliances can be extracted in order to create device profiles allowing for their integration and management within a HEMS

Automatic Electrical Appliances Control Panel Based on Infrared and Wi-Fi: A Framework for Electrical Energy Conservation

-Today, proprietary home automation targets very specific applications which operate mostly on a cable based infrastructure. In contrast to that, our implementation builds on a wireless platform for the automatic control of house hold electrical appliances. The nodes gather sensor readings in a home and transmit them to a central automation server. There, the readings are matched against a list of script statements. When there is a match, a specific action is performed. An important property of the system is that the control of all home appliances is done by means of the ubiquitous Infrared and Wi-Fi wireless technologies. This way, the co-operation between manufacturers is not a necessity in order to connect devices to the home automation network

Maximum Production Of Transmission Messages Rate For Service Discovery Protocols

Minimizing the number of dropped User Datagram Protocol (UDP) messages in a network is regarded as a challenge by researchers. This issue represents serious problems for many protocols particularly those that depend on sending messages as part of their strategy, such us service discovery protocols. This paper proposes and evaluates an algorithm to predict the minimum period of time required between two or more consecutive messages and suggests the minimum queue sizes for the routers, to manage the traffic and minimise the number of dropped messages that has been caused by either congestion or queue overflow or both together. The algorithm has been applied to the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol using ns2 simulator. It was tested when the routers were connected in two configurations; as a centralized and de centralized. The message length and bandwidth of the links among the routers were taken in the consideration. The result shows Better improvement in number of dropped messages `among the routers