A SECURED GSM-BASED REMOTE CONTROLLED HOME AUTOMATION SYSTEM

Home automation systems are designated electronic systems in homes and residential buildings that makes it possible for the automation of household appliances. The challenges faced by home automation systems are high cost of ownership, inflexibility, poor manageability and difficulty in achieving security. In this work, a secured global system for mobile communication-based home automation system (GSM-HAS) was designed. The proposed system has a more improved technology that enhances flexibility by using GSM technology to interconnect its component to home automation system. The system comprises of five modules namely Mobile Phone, SIM900 GSM Module, Arduino Board, Relay Module and Peripheral Devices. The system used SIM900 Module which allows users to effectively control their house/office appliances simply by sending a short message service (SMS) to the device. ATMEGA328P microcontroller was used to communicate with SIM900 module and the relay module to carry out the basic ON/OFF operations received from the user android application.  The android application was implemented using Java programming language and MySql database.  The performance of the system shows that the user can control the home appliances through the android application, with an additional control for activating and deactivating the sensor system at home/office. The system helps turn-on and turn-off connected home appliances as well as detect intruders and send message to the user’s mobile phone. The system is designed to be highly secured, flexible, reliable and affordable. &nbsp

A Home Automation Prototype

This master thesis concerns the current and future development in the area of intelligent houses and home automation. It also describes a system for home automation developed for this thesis. Key words in the design are dynamic behaviour, flexibility, transparency and adaptability. The prototype has been built with a central, Java based, server. To this server, modules handling different communication protocols can be connected at run time. To these modules, devices can connect over the specified communications protocols and register in the server, also at run time. Devices can be for control and supervision (computer or phone GUI), but also equipment that is to be controlled (lamps, ventilation, stereo) and equipment for notification (sensors). For communication, a message system has been developed. The server uses a MySQL database and also has support for building macros with extensive command and timer functionality. Finally, the system supports users and positioning using RFID

Integrated Home Server

Since the advent of the microprocessor in the 1970s, the market for consumer electronics has exploded with new devices changing the way we live and do business. Today, mobile phones, cameras, PCs, iPads, mp3 players, network media players, security systems, automation and IT systems, all have common functionality and there is an increasing need for unification of access to all these devices around a common server based architecture to unlock the benefits of smart integration and to simplify access for the end user. IHS project is designed to provide to its business and home owners a unified network for all IT and electronic systems within a home or an office. This system integrates security, surveillance, access and attendance, home automation, audio and video players, File Server, Email Server, SMS Server (Texting), HTTP Proxy Server, DHCP Server, a caching DNS Server, Web Server and an internet gateway with an automatic virus scanner. In fact, it is a comprehensive system that completely governs a place wherever it is installed and provides integrated remotely accessible infrastructure for a Home or Business. Access to all home and business systems is available from any computer on the LAN, the internet and mobile phone. IHS is built around the Gateman Lifestyle Server which uses the robust Enterprise Linux Kernel CEntOS 5 and is written in Java. It can be accessed from Windows, MAC, Linux machines and i-phones as well as from any device that has a Java script enabled web browser. The device driver architecture allows additional electronic hardware to be incorporated making it relevant and extendable well into the future

Personalized Ambience: An Integration of Learning Model and Intelligent Lighting Control

The number of households and offices adopting automation system is on the rise. Although devices and actuators can be controlled through wireless transmission, they are mostly static with preset schedules, or at different times it requires human intervention. This paper presents a smart ambience system that analyzes the user’s lighting habits, taking into account different environmental context variables and user needs in order to automatically learn about the user’s preferences and automate the room ambience dynamically. Context information is obtained from Yahoo Weather and environmental data pertaining to the room is collected via Cubesensors to study the user’s lighting habits. We employs a learning model known as the Reduced Error Prune Tree (REPTree) to analyze the users’ preferences, and subsequently predicts the preferred lighting condition to be actuated in real time through Philips Hue. The system is able to ensure the user’s comfort at all time by performing a closed feedback control loop which checks and maintains a suitable lighting ambience at optimal level

Flashover performance of lightning protected buildings using scaled models and electric field analysis

In early era, Benjamin Franklin discovered that the application of Lightning Rod (also known as the Franklin Rod) method is found to be effectived as a lightning protective device for buildings. Hence, it was considered among the best solution to overcome the problems facing by publics due to lightning strikes. However, few years later it was found that the corroded Franklin Rod due to the impact of environmental contaminations tends to reduce its ability to effectively capture the lightning strikes. The directly or indirectly impacts of lightning strikes had caused owners to spend huge amount of money just to repair damages on the buildings. Nowadays, there were many professional standards and documents guiding public to properly install the building’s lightning protection system, yet the same damages problems had shown to be frequently occur that related to the strikes often bypasses the of Lightning Air Terminal (LAT) system. The main reason for this could be due to lacking ideas by learned circle of lightning experts as not to fully understand the behavior of Franklin Rods system when it interacts with the lightning leaders. Therefore, this thesis discusses the works that investigated the flashover performances occurred on the buildings with various structural geometry shapes. The case study method is using small scaled models for both laboratory and simulation works, aiming to understand the Franklin Rods performance on capturing lightning leaders. Summarizing the works, about 11 scaled-down building shape models equipped with Franklin Rods system are selected in the case studies such as follows; a conical, gable, triangular, half circle, L-shape, square, cylindrical, butterfly, pyramid, rectangular and inclined like shapes. These models were then injected with 30 lightning flashes each using the 100 kVpeak single stage impulse generator. This number of flashes is considered as total two-years lightning activity frequencies in Malaysia, which the lighting flash density is statistically recorded to be around 15 flashes / year / km2. The maximum applied voltage is about 86.5 kVpeak. The model scaling concept is based on 1:30 cm ratio for every 3 m height of building structure. Interestingly, the overall work data had shown that the pyramid-like shapes is found to be the best structure type to be used in reducing the LAT bypasses and direct strike damages. The structure’s Franklin Rod protection system captured the least number of strikes during competitive tests conducted on all of the scaled down building models. Works of electric field analysis on all building models were conducted using ANSYS Maxwell simulation tool. Utilisation of electric field plot data in this work enables the creation of likelihood factor (ranging from 0.1 to 0.9) method that so useful to capable predict the strikes pattern occurring on dedicated terminal rod. Both laboratory and simulation work also confirm that the edge shapes play crucial roles as intense electric fields is found to accumulate on the edges area when the Franklin Rod intercepts the lightning leaders. These mentioned findings lead to introducing better method of LAT placement on the top of the building, whereby the existing lightning protection system is recommended to have one of installed LAT rods elongated to act as sacrificial point to directly attract lightning strikes. All the work and key findings in this work can contribute to the science and technology field toward having a better LAT lightning protection system and also lead to better decision in selecting / designing the shapes and edges concept as to reduce likelihood of LAT bypasses and damages of the building structure