Smart Remote Control System (SRCS)

by

Malik Saiful Lizan Bin Jalaludin

20167

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of

the requirements for the
Bachelor of Information System (Hons)
(Business Information System)

SEPTEMBER 2019

Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS

32610 Seri Iskandar
Perak Darul Ridzuan

1
 Abstract

Technology's rapid growth has dramatically changed the standard of living in modern
society. In view of the growing amount of household electrical equipment manufactured, An
increasingly useful feature has become an integrated home control unit. Existing systems,
however, have issues with performance, strong price, non-open sources and numerous standards
that are incompatible Limiting the power of the affluent or the hobbyist's home appliances

This venture aims at developing a reliable, affordable and convenient remote control
structure to interface the Arduino open source microcontroller with the mobile application;
generating a fast, convenient controller system for electrical devices. In several stages, the
venture was carried out. A microcontroller called Arduino is the first installation that connects to
Wi-Fi and to interface mobile applications. First, in a home version, the system is designed to
operate with appliances. Eventually, Blink App provides a simple graphical user interface to
form the device user-friendly, completing the smart remote control system development.

The development of smart remote controller system will be implemented successfully.

Using the mobile app on the smartphone, Arduino was linked via wireless network, enabling
control of the home model appliances.

1
 Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Background of Study

Due to the population increase, housing desire is growing throughout world. It leads to
a global increased demand for energy use by the residential inhabitants (Hassan J. S et al.,
2014). Construction now absorbs up to 40% of the total global energy. And by 2030, it is
predicted that demand will increase to 50%, meaning half of the global energy (Hassan J. S et
al., 2014). Building in Malaysia already uses an amount of 50% of the electricity produced in
the state (Hassan J. S et al., 2014). Every year, therefore, there is always the need for efficient
energy usage in the construction sector (Ramli K. N et al., 2014). Because the energy demand
in Malaysia is expected to exceed 100 GWh in the coming year 2020. Nevertheless, more
than 50% of building energy consumption is air conditioning (Hassan J. S et al., 2014). In
addition, the main factor affecting air conditioner energy consumption is our attitude that does
not turn off when not in use. Therefore, to minimize the use of power, it is necessary to
consider and track the use itself.

Energy consumption is a significant part of the total demand for electricity in the
residential sector. (Rahman K. A et al., 2017). Many customers are not alert in their daily
lives about how to use power efficiently. In other words, users are inefficiently consuming
electrical energy because they are using inefficient electrical appliances. Electricity saving
requires either energy preservation or enhancement (Rahman K. A et al., 2017). Conserving
means carrying out less electricity-using tasks. Improving energy efficiency (EE) means
finding the right devices for the same activities that use less energy. It can be seen from the
survey that customers have not grasped the high power consumption that exists from their
electrical appliances (Rahman K. A et al., 2017).

Governments around the world are encouraging energy consumers to reduce energy
use by raising awareness, creating incentives to low-energy users and implementing options
to green energy. Other possible solutions may include reducing energy consumption and

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utility bills by installing integrated photovoltaic systems, alerting customers to their use of
electricity, using energy-efficient devices, replacing traditional devices with smart devices
(remote controllable sockets), and implementing intelligent energy management systems that
control smart devices (Al-Hassan E.S et al., 2018). The growing use of home remote control
system can be seen in cold cities like Williston, where the citizen set the their home’s heating
to go off when they leave and turn on the heater 15 minutes before returning (Chassiakos et
al., 2016). The HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning) system is the greatest option
for home automation system. Users want to connect home appliances wirelessly in an age of
wireless telecommunications like Bluetooth, WiFi, Zigbee, and GSM (Chassiakos et al.,
2016). Every wireless technology has its own definition and specifications.

In hot countries, including Malaysia, air conditioning is commonly used today. The
traditional air conditioning typically cools the house lean on the setting of the predetermined
temperature and not changed automatically to the convenience of the user (Jaafar L., 2014).
Several researchers are proposing excellent real-time, high reliability and good intelligence in
the central air conditioning control area. In addition, the conventional PID (proportional-
integral-derivative) algorithm still plays a major role in the system of control (Jaafar L.,
2014). The air conditioning system has becoming a field to be researched to improve the user
convenience by applying intelligent system such as Adaptive Fuzzy controller (Jaafar L.,
2014). While the enhanced air conditioning system is being developed, a modelling project
must include type of control system consideration. The controller in general is the
ineffectiveness of the continuous operation of air conditioning must be minimized. In the
presence of the sensing circuit, multiple control options are considered, which would shut off
air conditioning while there is no people in the room or house with air conditioning and
temperature sensor feedback, which would adjust the function of air conditioning based on
room temperature (Jaafar L., 2014). It always works constantly without systematic
monitoring, based on the experience of using the present traditional air conditioning method.
Air conditioning control is therefore controlled via a feedback control system to track and
maintain a persistent temperature based on the sensor's data input.

3
 While developing a remote control system, there are a few issues to tackle. The
process must be designed in such a way that new components or hardware are integrated so
that at a later stage these components should not be a concern. The system should be
convenient for user on the host side, allowing devices to be easily monitored and controlled.
The device interface should provide diagnostic tools in the event of any problems in the
future. Finally, the device should be cost-effective in order for anyone on the market to be
able to use it widely. Therefore, the project aimed at inventing a system that can improve the
energy usage by the occupants by controlling and monitoring it.

1.2 Problem Statement

Below are the problems that have been identified to be solved through the proposed system:

1. Occupant lack of awareness about the energy consumption of air conditioner or other
electrical appliances (Chiaroni D et al., 2016).
2. The manual switching method which through the fixed wall switch board is
an inconvenient method when frequent switching operation is required (Nagy Z et al.,
2015).
3. The traditional remote controller are easy to lose and the range of wireless is quite
short which is within 10 meter only.

1.3 Objective and Scope of Study

Objectives

In order to solve the problems to avoid further difficulty, the following objectives
need to be achieved:

1. To investigate and design a system that user able to monitor their usage using
smartphone.
2. The system able to alert the user when exceed the limit of usage.
3. To give user the ability to switch on or off the appliances from anywhere at anytime
using a smartphone over the Internet.

Scopes

4
 This venture aims to improve the energy usage of air conditioner or other
electrical appliances. While the goal of this venture is about to build an affordable,
reliable and adaptable system that give the user the ability to monitor and remotely
switch on or off the air conditioner using smartphone. For this purpose, the Arduino
microcontroller is used for sending signals to monitor electronic equipment as the
main controller for the device. For prototyping purposes, the system will be restricted
to a home model. A mobile application serves as the front-end while using a generic
Wifi module as the connection between mobile application and Arduino.

Chapter 2

5
 Literature Review

Existing Remote Control Systems Review

Various kind of solutions to home remote control systems have been developed. A
method based on SMS uses the Global Mobile Communication System technology available
for interacting with a microcontroller on telephones that acts as the primary monitor of access
to electrical equipment. In order to enable SMS capabilities, a GSM module must also be
connected to the microcontroller via a port (Ransing R. S., Rajput M., 2014). The downside
of this kind of program is that it is not convenient because there is no such graphical user
interface (GUI) is available, and entry keys and control codes should be considered for the
operation of the system (Asadullah M., Raza A., 2016).

Another solution is voice recognition to submit wireless network commands of Radio

Frequency (RF). The voice command is recorded, digitized and sent to a device using a
microphone to be interpreted by a Visual Basic-based program that uses the Microsoft speech
API (Kumar S., 2014). When the voice command is understood, test signals will be sent to
appropriate system addresses for intervention. Nonetheless, in interpreting voice commands,
the program tested was not always accurate (Rathnayake K. A. S. V et al., 2016).

Hand gestures have also been introduced to power remote control devices at home
(Jain S et al., 2014). In order to interpret and transmit command signals, a tiny camera used to
track the various moves made by the hand of the user. Nonetheless, the use of such
technologies involves the use of a high-end computer desktop to process information,
resulting to bigger arrangement costs.

The microcontroller (Arduino)

6
 Terminolgy

The word Arduino refers to the development group, design philosophy, hardware,
software and he application community's morals. Developed originally in Ivrea, Italy,
Arduino was addressed "Arduin of Ivrea" after the Italian king about 1000 years ago. The
name Arduino is an Italian masculine name that means "strong friend" and is always
capitalized as a proper name (Cobanoglu B., Atmaca I. F. O., 2018).

The Arduino Input / Output Plank is the Arduino system's body, palpable part. The
plank is based on the microprocessor Atmel AVR and earlier models with a serial port, power
supply connections, expansion connectors and different support components (Cobanoglu B.,
Atmaca I. F. O., 2018).

Figure 1 displays the Arduino board’s block dagram:

Figure 1: Arduino Input / Output block diagram (Cobanoglu B., Atmaca I. F. O.,
2018).

The Arduino has several different models of Input / Output Board. The plank
mentioned above in Figure 1 is Arduino Uno, which will be discussed further in the next
part.

7
Arduino Uno

For this design, the Arduino UNO, a board based on the ATmega328 microcontroller,
is used. The panel consists of 14 digital Input / Output connectors, 6 analog inputs, 16 MHz
ceramic resonator, USB port, power jack, In Circuit Serial Programming (ICSP) header and
reset button (Galadima A. A., 2014). An Integrated Developemtn Environemnt (IDE) design,
core folder and libraries folder are required for programming tools of the committee. The IDE
is written in only Java language, and the code library is written in C and C++ (Galadima A.
A., 2014).

Figure 2 shows the Arduino Uno layout:

Figure 2: Arduino Uno Layout (Kumbhar H., 2017).

Inside the Arduino Uno

Processor – Atmel ATmega328

8
 A single-chip microcontroller called ATmega328 serves as a brain of Arduino Uno
created by Atmel in the megaAVR family (later Microchip technology acquired in Atmel in
2016), and carries memory arrays, clocks, a central processing unit (CPU) and peripherals;
essentially a chip computer diagram (Cobanoglu B., Atmaca I. F. O., 2018). A simplified
block diagram of ATmega328 illustrated as the following:

Figure 3: ATmega328 Simplified block diagram (Cobanoglu B., Atmaca I. F. O.,

2018).

ATmega328 can operate between 1.8 and 5.5V, this makes it ideal for battery
power applications. Nevertheless, lesser voltages have a lesser maximum level of clock. A
minimum supply of 4.5V is required for running at the maximum rated clock rate of 20MHz.
Since the Arduino Input / Output board delivers 5.0V to the processor ATmega328, the
processor can run up to 20MHz at any speed (Cobanoglu B., Atmaca I. F. O., 2018).

The ATmega328 has a wide range of features, including:

 Port System,

 Timer System,

 Port System,

 Analog Digital Converter (ADC),

 and lastly, Serial communications.

9
 Figure 5 shows a simple chart of the systems available in Arduino:

Figure 4: Arduino Uno systems available (Kumbhar H., 2017).

Serial Port

While adding programs to the I/O panel, the serial port is used during the development
stage as communication between the Arduino and the PC. There are multiple types of serial
communication protocols. The Arduino serial port is used in asynchronous mode, which
means there is no need for an external clock signal. The asynchronous method utilizes one
data transmission signal and one data receiving signal (Cobanoglu B., Atmaca I. F. O., 2018).

Expansion Connectors/Ports

For add additional circuitry, the Arduino Uno offers four sets of expansion
connectors:

 Digital Input / Output connectors

 Power connector

 Analog connector

10
 Figure 5: Connectors for Arduino Uno Extension (Cobanoglu B., Atmaca I. F. O., 2018).

The power connector connects to the different voltages of the supply (Vin, 5V, 3V3,
GND) as well as the –RESET pin. There are six analog inputs in the analog connector, A0-
A6, configured to use as digital input / output lines as well. (Cobanoglu B., Atmaca I. F. O.,
2018).

Shields

It is possible to attach additional functionality and hardware from outside to the

Arduino using the daughterboard principle in the Arduino convention known as "Shields".
Both shields ensemble the Arduino board's extension connectors, permitting the Input /
Output Board to act as a tiny motherboard, supplying additional circuitry with electrical and
mechanical connections. The Arduino WiFi Shield will be given emphasis as one of the main
elements of this system and will be further specified in the next paragraph.

11
Figure 6: An example of connections when packed together between the Ethernet Shield and
the Arduino board (Baker E., 2014).

Programming the Arduino

To be able to interact with the software used in this task, the Arduino-Uno board
needs to upload some program (code) to the Arduino-Uno. Each chapter provides a summary
of programming the Arduino Uno. A programmer, running a separate device from the
Arduino Uno, makes a code for the system to attach for Arduino computing in such file (.hex
file) Use the root directory of the software generated by the author of the program. Within
three phases, below is completed:

1. Compilation – the source files of the software are translated to assembly

code (.asm file).

2. The assembly language file is then delivered to the assembler, which

transforms it into the appropriate machine code (.hex file) for uploading
to the Arduino Uno.

3. The program will be uploaded into Arduino Uno.

Figure 8 below provides an illustration of the process:

12
 Figure 7: The Arduino Uno programming (Devekar N., 2018).

This Arduino IDE software offers a convenient interface for users to facilitate the
process of development and programming. In the next chapter, the ADE will be addressed in
more detail.

Arduino Development Environment

The ADE includes an editor of text, a status display message area, a screen of text, a
standard feature toolbar, and a menu bar. In addition, ADE offers a convenient interface for
fast upload of code, this is possible because the Arduino Uno is ready to boot (Devekar N.,
2018).

WiFi Module (ESP8266)

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 The ESP8266 WiFi Module is a self-contained SOC with built-in TCP / IP protocol
stack that can provide connectivity to your WiFi network for any microcontroller. The
ESP8266 is capable of either hosting an application or importing from another software
processor all Wi-Fi networking functions. Every ESP8266 module comes pre-programmed
with a firmware set of AT commands, which means that the user can easily hook up to the
Arduino and get as much WiFi capability as a WiFi Shield offers.

Figure 8: WiFI Module ESP8266 (Anandakumar M et al., 2017).

Wireless Network

2.4 Wireless networks Wireless networks or WLANs are networks that transmit
signals via radio frequency waves through the atmosphere. IEEE's 802.11 committee
develops the most popular wireless standards today. The project uses two of the wireless
standards; namely802.11b and 802.11g (Rappaport T. S et al., 2017).

Relays

A relay is an electromechanical switch type. It has a generic microcontroller interface

that can be controlled directly. Provided the electrical isolation of the control pins and
switches, a relay can be used to control large current with a small current (Agrawal N.,
Singhal S., 2015). It means that it can be used to monitor different large-scale appliances and
equipment (Agrawal N., Singhal S., 2015). Therefore, relays are best suited for this project to
be used as switches to electronic devices as they can be triggered by Arduino's low-current
signals.

Chapter 3

14
 Methodology

Research Methodology

Interfacing with Mobile Apllication

Figure 9: Research Methodology Process Flow Chart

Preliminary research is done after verification of the project name to evaluate the
current remote controller systems and identify the problems before a more pragmatic solution
is proposed. More work will be carried out to find the most appropriate project execution
hardware and software. This project is then drawn up for the design of the process and
materials are purchased.

It is important to familiarize the programming language of Arduino. The next move is

to get the system to wirelessly function using WiFi protection and remote controller to power
electrical devices through the mobile application. Using the Blink App, a basic graphical user
interface is generated after the hardware configuration is finalized. Once the device is found

15
to be reliable, the microcontroller used to monitor the actual electrical devices will be
designed into a more realistic configuration.

Mobil

e App

Figure 10: Full System Design

Gantt Chart

16
17
 Final Year Project 1

Operation

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1 Selection of title

Structure Research and

2

Literature review

Concept drawing and system

3 architecture

Program WiFi Module,

Arduino and
4
Mobile application

5 Testing phase

Final Year Project I Milestones:

Selection of title completion : Week One

Structure research and literature review completion : Week Six
System architecture completion : Week Eight
Arduino, Wifi Module and mobile app completion : Week Ten
Testing phase completion : Final Week

Tools
A list of the hardware and software to use is mentioned below:

18
 Hardware
 Arduino Uno as microcontroller and server.

 WiFi Module (ESP8266)

 Relays

 Resistors

 Electrical Appliances (Air Conditioner)

 5V power supply

Software
 Arduino 1.8.10 (Arduino IDE )

 Mobile Application (e.g. Blink App, Google Firebase)

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion

19
4.1 Design and Implementation

This plan offers a low cost and powerful smart remote control platform. There are two main
modules in this system: the control module for hardware and the interaction module for code.
The Arduino Uno microcontroller, which can also act as a micro web server and the interface
for all the hardware modules, is at the core of this project. The microcontroller moves through
all contact and controls in this process.

The technical specifications for this project are as follows:

1) A smartphone that should be equipped with the Android app or IOS app.
2) Wifi module – this system will be connected to the smartphone using WiFi
connection.
3) Controller or the main processing circuit – In this project Arduino Uno is the main
controlling / processing unit. Also, this project can be developed using PIC18F4550,
AVR ATmega32 and 8051 series like: 89s51, 89c51, 89s52, 89v51RD2.
4) Relays to control devices – Need to use 12volt Single throw relays.
5) Output Devices – For the demo purpose, a DC devices is connected to a relay (12volt
DC Air conditioner). Besides, any AC/DC devices can be connected to the remaining
3 relays.

4.2 Applications

Using this venture, users can use a smartphone or tablet to turn on or off appliances
remotely. The plan can be further extended to include some sensors such as light sensors,
temperature sensors, security sensors, etc. and automatically adjust various parameters such
as room lighting, air conditioning (room temperature), door locks, etc. In addition, the user
can connect to the internet and manage the home over the internet from a remote location, as
well as track the energy consumption.

Chapter 5

20
 Conclusions and Recommendations

The development of the smart remote control system will be implemented

successfully. Using the smartphone mobile application, Arduino was linked via wireless
network or Wifi connection, enabling control of the home model appliances.

To order to make the smart remote control system even better, sensor technology such
as heat sensors and human presence detection sensors can be integrated with the system for
potential upgrades. For example, if occupants enter a room, motion detectors will turn
automatically on the air conditioner and turn off after being abandoned by the inhabitants.

Remote access to Internet which using WiFi Module (ESP8266) is one of the most
convenient features to be used in control systems for electrical appliances. This will allow
users from anywhere and anytime to access and track the home system. The WiFi Module
application has been successfully tested by different manufacturers on a multitude of different
mobile phones, their portability and compatibility are thus proven.

When this project is completed, it is expected that a low-cost, friendly to use and
accessible home appliance remote control platform will be available for all.

21
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