Sensor System for Smart Home Automation Based on

Internet Access
Abdur Rohman, Andiki Rahyagara, Ibnu Al Rasyid, Irfan Nurkholis, Muhammad Ali Topan, Muhammad
Hasby Adam. Departemen Teknik Nuklir dan Teknik Fisika, Fakultas Teknik, Universitas Gadjah Mada

Abstract - In a progressing era towards modernization

almost every aspect of human life can be controlled
remotely. Sensors and actuators play an important
part in a controlled system. The concept of long
distance control over the state of a house is the main
focus of this paper because we frequently found our
self in a situation where we need immediate action
over long distance. Smart home is a solution for
monitoring and controlling the state of the house
through actuators.
Smart home system relies on sensors and
actuators to collect information and to manage the
state of the house e.g. energy use and security system.
In this paper we integrate smart home system with a
mobile application found in a standard smartphone to
ease data accessibility for the user. Sensors in the
house will gather information and then pass it on to a
microcontroller to be processed by a computer and
finally uploaded to an online database for storage.
This data can be accessed by the user to be
manipulated at will. The smart home system is
intended to optimize energy use and increase security.
Index term; sensor, smart home, actuator, internet,
mobile access

I. INTRODUCTION
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network
of physical objectsdevices, vehicles, buildings
and other itemsembedded with electronics,
software, sensors, and network connectivity that
enables these objects to collect and exchange data.
The IoT allows objects to be sensed and controlled
remotely across existing network infrastructure. It
can connect any device with an on and off switch
to the Internet (and/or to each other).It can help
human to reduce waste and improve efficiency for
things such as energy use.
Research found that many problems relating
to a remote control that requires immediate action.

These are some example of the problems

-The negligence in turning off appliances that are
not needed at the time for example turning off the
lights during the day. This case occurs mostly
when the resident is in hurry to go out this result
in high energy loss.
-Unpredictable weather is also a problem when
the resident of the house is away and needed
immediate action for example a sudden rain when
clothes are being dried in the washing line a
remotely activated pulley system on the washing
line can be a solution.
- When a guest is visiting but the house is vacant
or when the resident forgot to lock the door.
Unlocking or locking the door remotely can be the
solution.
-A process that takes a lot of time for example air
conditioning. When the resident are expecting an
immediate result after stepping into the house but
needed to wait for the process to finish instead.
The waiting can be removed with remote control
of the house so the action can be taken before the
resident arrives home.
Integrating IoT with the smart home system
enable the system to measure home condition,
receive commands by the microcontroller for
performing certain actions, stores data from
sensors and cloud services for data analysis and
serves as command queue being sent to actuators
as well, facilitates processing the data received
from the sensors and storing the data in database
and enable to measure and visualize sensor data,
and control devices using a mobile device.
Using IoT with the Smart Home system
proves to be very advantageous in terms of
efficiency, practicality and data speed transfer.
Nevertheless with so many devices connected over

the internet poses a security problem. And also an

issue will arise with the massive amounts of data
that all of these devices are going to produce.
Smart home system need to figure out a way to
store, track, analyze and make sense of the vast
amounts of data that will be generated.

Based on the gathered information above,

we will design a smart home system focused on
sensor application at every component or house
appliances. Hopefully this design will be used for
further studies and design on the smart home
system.

Using an internet access, that are now

available almost anywhere user can access the
smart home system wirelessly through the WAN
environment. This kind of system requires a home
based server that will run day and night. This is
technology is widely used in Smart Home system,
as efficient as it is, this system have a difficulty in
handling the devices and have a high cost. Using a
web server and a home proxy can limit the use of
hardware on the system therefor lowering the cost.
Home proxy can be used to solve synchronization
and supports multi users. One smart phone can be
assign to different proxy therefore One smart
phone can control more than one smart home.

II. SYSTEM DESIGN

A well design system is not enough to be a

successful and popular tool for users it also need to
be user friendly. One of many problems in creating
a user friendly and convenient way to interact with
the smart home system is the user necessity to be
near an interface (Smart Phone). Voice recognition
can be used to overcome the problem but this is
still not effective because the need to push a button
to activate voice recognition and the distance
between the interface and the user must be close
enough for the command to be received clearly. A
device that follows its user autonomously around
the house could solve the problem but may raise
another that is energy consumption.
Minimizing the user involvement in
managing the Smart Home System is another way
of improving user friendliness. This can be
achieved by designing a system that seems
autonomous and can predict the user needs.By
setting up a wireless sensor network and collecting
data the system can predict the states of home
based on the historical data. This system works
well if the user remains in the same habit but for an
environment where the user is changes (for
example a hotel) the data may not be valid and can
show a false prediction. More problems arise if
there are multiple user instead of one, each person
may have different daily, weekly, and monthly
habit.

There is not a standard in designing a smart

home system to this date, which is why in this
paper we create a smart home design implementing
particular sensors according to their location.
This design utilize the low power
microcontroller technology e.g. Arduino and ESP
module and because the system is programmable it
requires less hardware. The types of sensor we will
be using are

Motion sensor located at windows

and doors
Electromagnetic sensor located at
garage doors
Temperature Sensor located in every
room

And actuators in the form of relay

functioning as a switch on lighting and water
heater.

Figure 1.Smart Home System Scheme

Figure one explains the flow of the system that we

have built. The sensors that have been placed
according to their function are connected to a
microcontroller. The microcontroller is also
connected to a Wi-Fi module as a mean to connect
to the internet. Data will be stored in an online
database which is a website (AGNOSthings)

integrated with the Wi-Fi ESP8266 module. Data

that have been stored can be accessed and
manipulated by users to be sent back to the
microcontroller then processed as a command to
actuators.

Figure 4.3D model of the location of the EM

Sensor

2. Motion Sensor

Figure 2.Sensor Placement Scheme

III. SENSORS AND ACTUATORS

1. Electromagnetic Sensor
Figure 5.Motion sensor with piezoelectric

The motion sensor will be placed near windows

and doors. This sensor uses a piezoelectric to sense
movement or displacement. The piezoelectric
generates an electrical signal if there is a pressure
change that caused by movements. The electrical
signal acts as an indication of movement that has
been programed in the microcontroller.

Figure 3.Electromagnetic Sensor

The electromagnetic sensor will be placed at the

garage where vehicles are stored. This sensor is
able to detect vehicle movement. The sensor
detects the electromagnetic signal produced by the
vehicle and converted into an electrical signal that
activates the sensor.
Figure 6.3D model of the placement of the motion sensor

3. Temperature Sensor

Figure 7.Temperature Sensor

The Temperature sensor will be placed in

room, where it will read the room temperature and
the user can remotely access the data and control
the home air conditioning unit while away from
home.
4. Actuator
The actuator in this system acts as a switch. The
switch is connected with a relay and
microcontroller. The microcontroller commands
the relay to connect or disconnect.

Figure 8.Actuator on lighting Circuit