1.

Introduction
Automation is today’s fact, where more things are being completed every day automatically,
usually the basic tasks of turning on or off certain devices and beyond, either remotely or in close
proximity.

The idea of the smart home has been around for decades, but only recently has technology
started to catch up with our imagination. Science fiction writers have long imagined what the
homes of the future would be like, and finally these dreams are becoming a reality. From kettles
to thermostats, fridges to smoke detectors, the internet is increasingly finding its way into more
and more of our everyday household appliances.

As technology continues to get smarter, so do the homes that feature it. Previously independent
devices can now be connected over the internet, allowing us greater control over what is
happening in our homes, even when we’re not there.

A smart home is a home where in all man’s comfort, entertainment, and esthetic needs are
governed by technology. For example, ambience parameters like lighting/temperature needs are
made intelligent to sense the need and provide. In a smart home, a person can have all necessary
services right from wake up alarms to personalized calendars with essential reminders to diet
needs to medical support available to his disposal with an ease of a click of buttons or gestures.
This is possible because of the advancement of wide variety of sensor technologies and high
processors technologies.

An internet based home automation system focuses on controlling home electronic devices
whether you are inside or outside your home. Home automation gives an individual the ability to
remotely or automatically control things around the home. A home appliance is a device or
instrument designed to perform a specific function, especially an electrical device, such as a
refrigerator, for household use. The words appliance and devices are used interchangeably.
2. General Motivation
Smart technology has led to the connectivity of nearly everything in our daily lives. As time
progresses and technology improves, the very likely scenario is the continued integration of
internet connectivity in nearly all electronic devices.

In general there are some initiatives that leads to home automation this day:

 The need for controlling home from anywhere at any time (remote control).
 The need to provide comfort, convenience and quality of life for people residents.
 The need to secure once own home with most recent and sophisticated security
technology.
 To increase efficiency of performing household activity
 To reduce effort and time wastage carrying household activity
 To reduce health related problem issuing.

3. Goal of the Paper

This seminar paper aims to present a systematic review of existing software, hardware, and
communications control systems for smart homes. It gives an overview of the status of smart
home technologies by discussing the main relevant features and pointing out the strengths and
weakness of technology.

4. Overview of Previous Technology

The first smart homes were ideas, not actual structures. For decades, science fiction has explored
the idea of home automation. Prolific writers, such as Ray Bradbury, imagined a future where
homes were interactive, and seemingly ran themselves. In Bradbury’s cautionary short story,
“There Will Come Soft Rains” he describes an automated home that continues to function even
after humans have died out. It’s all well and frightening, until you consider the actual benefits of
home automation, and then the idea becomes more comforting than chilling.

1901 – 1920 - The invention of home appliances – Although home appliances aren’t what we’d
consider “smart,” they were an incredible achievement in the early twentieth century. These
achievements began with the first engine-powered vacuum cleaner in 1901. A more practical
electricity-powered vacuum was invented in 1907. Throughout two decades refrigerators would
be invented, as well as clothes dryers, washing machines, irons, toasters, and so much more.
1966 – 1967 - ECHO IV and the Kitchen Computer – Although it was never commercially
sold, the ECHO IV was the first smart device. This clever device could compute shopping lists,
control the home’s temperature and turn appliances on and off. The Kitchen Computer,
developed a year later, could store recipes, but had the unfortunate tagline, “If she can only cook
as well as Honeywell can computer” and therefore sold no models.

1998 – Early 2000s: Smart Homes – Smart homes, or home automation, began to increase in
popularity in the early 2000s. As such, different technology began to emerge. Smart homes
suddenly became a more affordable option, and therefore a viable technology for consumers.
Domestic technologies, home networking, and other gadgets began to appear on store shelves.

5. Literature Review
I have reviewed the literature related to my seminar topic that has been done for last few years in
order to find out work carried out by various researchers. There are many systems for remote
monitoring and control designed as commercial products or experimental research platforms. It
is noticed that most of the research carried out belongs to thefollowing categories:

 Power Line Home Automation System

This automation is inexpensive and doesn’t require additional cables to transfer the information,
but uses existing power lines to transfer the data. However, this system involves a large
complexity and necessitates additional converter circuits and devices.(Keyence, B.; "PC remote
control of appliances by using telephone lines," Consumer Electronics, IEEE Transactions on,
vol.41, no.1, pp.201-209, Feb 1995 doi: 10.1109/30.370328(PDF) Power line communication
based automation system using a handheld Wi-Fi device.)

 Wired Home Automation System

In this type of automation, all the home equipment’s are connected to a main controller
(programmable logic controller) through a communication cable. The equipment is attached with
actuators to communicate with the main controller. The entire operations are centralized by the
computer that continuously communicates with the main controller.(Ms.Pawar Pallavi Tatyasaheb,
Mr. B.E. Shinde (2016)” A Review on Home Automation System Using Different Techniques” Vol. 3,
Issue 6, pp. 2996-3000)
  Wireless Home Automation

This is the expansion and advancement of wired automation which uses wireless technologies
like IR, ZigBee, WI-Fi, GSM, Bluetooth and most recently Amazon Alexia etc., for achieving
remote operation. (Chen Peijiang and Jiang Xuehua, 2008), (Wijetunge et al., 2008)

6. Description of Smart Home

The description of smart home varies to the context of where it is used. There are mainly two
different ways of expression by either narrow sense or generalized sense.

In narrow sense, a smart home is more sketched as home automation or assistive demotic. It
refers the use of computer and information technology to control devices and features in a home-
like environment such as lighting, entertainment systems, temperature, and so on. Smart homes
use the electronic networking technology to integrate various devices and appliances found in
almost all homes so that an entire home can be controlled centrally or remotely as a single
machine. Inside each of these machines, integrating all devices and appliances allows them to
communicate with one and each other through a home controller, thereby simultaneously
enabling control of various machines in preprogrammed scenarios or operating modes.

In generalized sense, smart home can be any of one “cell” that deployed with human-machine
and/or machine-machine interfaced devices, with capability of monitoring and controlling
automatically or remotely, as well as communication capability to other similar “cells” or the
system for monitoring and controlling. An example can be the usage of sensing system for
climate monitoring: deploying different sensors/detectors for temperature, moisture, soil, air,
water etc., and sending the sensed data periodically to the server. Advances in wireless
communications enabled multiple sensor devices to send and receive data over long distance,
which promotes continuous climate monitoring as well as environment management furthermore
realized in anywhere at any time necessary.

In summary of both narrow and generalized senses, the smart home could employ a general
definition: a cell with independent devices functioning into an integrated system under
centralized control remotely or automatically, and able to communicate with other similar cells
or command systems via shared protocols. In this definition, a smart home is rather called as a
“smart home cell” in this study to avoid the narrow understanding of a home-like only.
Essential Elements of a Smart Home

Smart home consists of following three elements:

Firstly, single functioning devices which are independently operating to control each of their
own functions, for example temperature, moisture, security, lighting, shielding, energy,
entertainment, air quality, soil quality, water quality… and so on. They can be various sensors,
detectors, meters, switches etc. able to be operated under remote or automatic control.

Secondly, centralized control unit of the cell, like control panels or smart mobile devices
(phones, tablets or others with relative control application) which can control all single
functioning devices deployed in one cell, thus an “inner” communication unit. The control is
conducted via remote (Bluetooth, infrared or other RF approaches), mostly the wireless network
(Wi-Fi) as the first prioritized choice.

The third, shared protocols interacting among one cell and ‘outsiders’, e.g. other smart home
cells or commanding systems (control centers, data processing centers etc.), through which one
cell can exchange message/data with each other and the center compatibly, thus an “inter”
communication way. By this setting, a smart home cell and other similar cells can compose a
programmed controlled network and be utilized in anywhere at any time with any manners
commanded by one center.

In another word, the protocol setting becomes one mandatory element of a smart home cell being
utilized widely and wisely, for instance operated in the context of Internet of Things (IoT). These
protocols need to be agreed and programmed prior to the data exchange, unless one smart home
cell is designed to be in isolate running.

Based on the above, it is the time to try drawing a system view which demonstrates the smart
home, the outsiders and the inner and inter communications
 Figure 1. A system of smart home cells and commanding center

On the figure above, single functioning devices of one cell are demonstrated by color boxes,
among which centralized control unit is shown at the middle. The inner communication inside of
the cell is presented by black arrows, whilst inter communications with other cells and the
commanding center by blue dual-direction arrows.
Advantage of Smart Home

The benefits of home automation are many. The first and often most persuasive benefit of home
automation is the convenience factor. There is just nothing like being able to communicate with
your home remotely, from wherever you are. A smart home is truly the next level in convenience
and customization. However, not to be glossed over are some of the ancillary benefits of home
automation. These include:

 Safety
The ability to control small appliances and lighting with your fingertips anywhere you are will
add safety in your home. You can make sure appliances are off when it’s needed to be off and
on when it’s needed to be on.
 Security
The ability to lock the door through your phone is one of the greatest benefits of home
automation. This will give you peace of mind knowing that the door is close and not guessing.
The fact that you can be alerted each time someone enters your home also allows you to monitor
who is entering your home at all times, especially when you are not there. CCTV surveillance
camera is one of the biggest security system achievement which used to check whether our home
is under thief.
 Convenience
The ability to control everything with your fingertips is very convenient. You never leave the
house without your wallet, keys and your smart phone. With our smart phone always with us,
we can easily monitor our home and control everything with just touch of a finger.
 Saves Time
Since we are living in a very fast-paced environment, we don’t even have time to worry about
our home. With home automation, we can save time going back to our home and make sure
everything is order, like if the kids close the door from school or turn on the lights when you get
home.
 Save Money
This is the biggest advantage of home automation. With the ability to control the light, whether
dimming or turning on/off on specific time will saves homeowner a great ton of money. You can
save money through household temperature, with proper automation in window shades and
automated thermostat. In addition, you can save gas, by not driving back home if you forgot to
turn off appliances or lock the door.
Disadvantage of Smart Home

Living in a home with smart home technology provides you with convenient features from a
central location. It is true that there are several advantages of having a smart home, but there are
a few disadvantages of having a smart home. Here are a few things to consider before
you invest in smart home technology:

 Steep Learning Curve

Learning how to operate smart home technology is not difficult if you are a tech-savvy
individual. If your technology skills are not advanced, you will have to take time to learn how to
use the technology. This may require spending a significant amount of time consulting
instruction manuals that teach you how to properly use the device.

 Internet Reliability

Since smart homes rely heavily on the strength of your internet connectivity, your system could
experience problems on days when your internet signals are weak. Poor internet strength could
cause your technology to fail or stall.

 Cyber Attacks

Smart home technology is vulnerable to hacking and cyber-attacks. If your smart home
technology is hacked, strangers can remotely unlock your doors, change your thermostat, turn off
your lights or disable your security alarm.
7. Application Areas of Smart Home

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC): It is possible to have remote control of
all home energy monitors over the internet incorporating a simple and friendly user interface.

Lighting control system: A "smart" network that incorporates communication between various
lighting system inputs and outputs, using one or more central computing devices. Lighting
control systems are widely used on both indoor and outdoor lighting of commercial, industrial,
and residential spaces. Lighting control systems serve to provide the right amount of light where
and when it is needed.

Occupancy-aware control system: It is possible to sense the occupancy of the home using
smart meters and environmental sensors like CO2 sensors, which can be integrated into the
building automation system to trigger automatic responses for energy efficiency and building
comfort applications.

Home robots and security: A household security system integrated with a home automation
system can provide additional services such as remote surveillance of security cameras over the
Internet, or access control and central locking of all perimeter doors and windows.

Indoor positioning systems (IPS): An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a system used to
locate objects or people inside a building using lights, radio waves, magnetic fields, acoustic
signals, or other sensory information. There are several commercial systems on the market, but
there is no standard for an IPS system.

Home automation for the elderly and disabled: The form of home automation focuses on
making it possible for older adults and people with disabilities to remain at home, safe and
comfortable. Home automation is becoming a viable option for older adults and people with
disabilities who would prefer to stay in the comfort of their homes rather than move to a
healthcare facility. This field uses much of the same technology and equipment as home
automation for security, entertainment, and energy conservation but tailors it towards older
adults and people with disabilities.
8. Example of Smart Home Technology

Amazon Echo/ Echo Dot: These excellent speakers allow you to do everything effortlessly.
Integrate them with Amazon Alexa, a device that manages music playback, to do lists, traffic
information, and other real-time data. It will turn the Echo on in an instant. Order a Big Mac without
lifting your phone receiver. The Echo is the perfect digital assistant. Get it to turn your music on
automatically. It connects with other appliances as well. You can program it to turn on your coffee
maker or your microwave oven.

Belkin WeMo Switch: The Belkin WeMo turns anything that you plug into it automatically. All
you have to do is plug it into a power outlet and connect it to your WI-FI network. It may be
finicky once in a while, but it can detect malfunctions in devices. You can also program it to shut
down appliances which take up too much energy.

Nest Learning Thermostat: The Nest Learning Thermostat accommodates your schedule and
regulates the temperature of your home accordingly. Set it to cool or warm your home before
you step into it. You can do this via an app that you can download to your tablet. It works well to
regulate the temperatures in the smaller areas of your home.