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2018 1 International Scientific Conference of Engineering Sciences - 3 Scientific Conference of Engineering Science (ISCES)

Smart Home as a New Trend, a Simplicity Led to

Revolution
Jumana Waleed
Department of Computer
Science, College of Science,
University of Diyala, Iraq
1
jumanawaleed@sciences.uodi
yala.edu
Areej M. Abduldaim
Applied Sciences
Department, University of
Technology,
Baghdad, Iraq
100044@uotechnology.edu.iq
Taha Mohammed Hasan
Department of Computer
Science, College of Science,
University of Diyala, Iraq
dr.tahamh@sciences.uodiyala.
edu.iq
Qutaiba Salih Mohaisin
College of Computer Science
and Mathematics, Tikrit
University, Iraq
katoopsaleh@gmail.com

Abstract— Smart home gives a revolutionary life experiment, based smart phones have been presented in which the remote
being the new trend of residential expansion in the future. controlling is via different wireless connections such as; WiFi
Nowadays, there are many advanced technologies equipped with [1] [2] [3], Bluetooth [4] [5] [6] [7], internet [5] [8] and GSM
many sensors which can be applicable to smart homes. These [9].
technologies enable the user to communicate with home devices
via the Internet and smart phone; and enhance the capability of
home devices such as monitoring, warning and remote controlling
etc. to assist and support our life. The design of smart homes is
very critical and important, some of them are very simple and the
other is too complex. Most smart home appliances are controlled
via high cost and fragile devices. This paper presents a new trend
of simple technologies that can be applied in a smart home with a
cheaper and flexible controlling and monitoring system based
smart phone.

Keywords— Smart home, low cost systems, smart phone, remote

controlling, Arduino.

I. INTRODUCTION

The Smart homes can be defined as living environments

supplied with advanced intelligent technologies that anticipate
and respond according to the requirements of the home
residents. When designing the smart homes, there are different
purposes have to be taken into consideration; firstly, providing
comfort, elder care, childcare, and healthcare; secondly,
improving security through alerts to protect the residence from
accidents and intruders; thirdly, reducing the energy
consumption; and finally, provision the multimedia
entertainment. For all these purposes, the networking smart Fig. 1 An illustration for remote controlling of the smart home
home appliances need to be combined with a flexible remote
controlling system, that is reachable by multi-entry points such In this paper, we proposed a low cost and efficient
as personal computers, tablets, smartphones and etc. (see Fig. application system that aims to; ensure access and control of
1). In recent years, smart phones have formed a remarkable smart home appliances remotely by using an Android smart
innovation that has revolutionized the world. The android phone, facilitate the process of smart home management via
smart phones brought the attention of many developers, since using the wireless communication technology (WiFi), provide
they are open source, and they allow easy access to the time and effort, ensure more security for the home accidents
hardware components by providing many communication and reduce the energy consumption, in addition to reduce water
interfaces and substantial diversity of compact sensors. consumption when irrigating the home garden through the use
Nowadays, the smartphones are generally utilized as an of soil humidity sensor. The rest of this paper is prepared as
interface to the user for remote controlling and monitoring the follows; in the next section, the related works are illustrated. In
appliances in the smart homes. Several smart home systems section III, we demonstrate the main tasks of our proposed

978-1-5386-1498-3/ 18/31.00$©2018 IEEE

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2018 1 International Scientific Conference of Engineering Sciences - 3 Scientific Conference of Engineering Science (ISCES)

project. Finally, the summary of our work is drawn in the last appliances via the WiFi technology. In this project, a set of
section. sensors was used, in addition to the use of two boards of
Arduino microcontroller which represent the brain that controls
II. RELATED WORK all the components of the project, and to isolate both the micro
controlling unit and the controlled appliances, a relay is used.
There are a considerable number of published researches on Also, a Raspberry Pi is used to serve as a server. This system
simplified and low cost smart homes systems which may takes the values of the sensors and sends them to the home's
indicate an evidence of new trends in the use of smart phones. owner, in addition to sending him an alert if an event occurred
[1] presented a smart home system which utilizes smart phones inside the house without his knowledge. An application was
sensors (microphone sensor, WiFi) for monitoring energy developed and built based on the Android system to control the
consumption for each individual machine in a real environment. devices and display the values of the project through it. The
But this system needs more experiments on utilizing smart simplistic design of our system will lead to the easiest
phones location and adding external sensors for detecting interaction for the user with it. In addition to the proposed
multiple machines. [4] proposed a smart home system to subsystems in the smart home, more subsystems can be added
provide eldercare which uses the Bluetooth to allow remote such as [12] [13] [14].
access from the smart phone. This system controls the existent
electrical switches for low-voltage activated procedure. The III. THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
designed system in [5] is proposed to provide different
purposes; security, sound activation, a user authentication and In this project, suitable hardware and software components
energy management. This system contains an Android are selected with the consideration of a low cost and flexibility.
application (smart phone or tablet), hardware units and a micro The main hardware components comprise of:
web server operating on Arduino Ethernet as a controller for 1) Two boards of Arduino microcontroller (Arduino
connecting and coordinating events between the sensors in the Mega and Arduino Uno) is chosen due to their
smart home and the Bluetooth/internet module. The simplistic simplicity, inexpensive price, and small size;
project in [9] is proposed for controlling the electrical 2) The Raspberry Pi 3 is used as a server due to its
appliances such as windows, lights, and fans. In this system, a portability, full computer quality, and comparatively
smart phone is utilized to transmit an SMS which includes the lower cost;
commands. In the receiving point, the GSM module receives 3) The Network Shield connects the Arduino boards to
these commands and sends a specific code to a Peripheral the Raspberry Pi;
Interface Controller (PIC), and this microcontroller reads the 4) Relay of eight channel is used as a switch;
code and sends the signals to relays for executing the events. 5) A set of solar panels have been built to obtain
[8] proposed a smart home system for reducing the energy electrical energy and then stored it in the batteries.
consumption in which the user will send an instruction by The hardware construction of the proposed system is
using an Android smart phone to the database server via demonstrated in Fig. 2.
Internet, after that the command will be transmitted to the The proposed system represents a set of subsystems that
ATmega16 microcontroller to be executed. This system needs achieve various purposes:
to add a user authentication to get reliable access. A prototype • Plant irrigation system
for providing healthcare, elder care, and child care by • Intelligent lighting system
performing environmental monitoring is proposed in [10]. This • Intelligent heating and cooling system
prototype contains; Raspberry Pi, traditional cameras, motion • Weather sensitivity system
sensors, WiFi and the main server. The main server handles the • Fire protection system
data captured by sensors and send alerts via smartphones to the • Anti-theft protection system
user. This prototype needs to add more sensors and remote • Solar energy system
control the smart home appliances. The project in [11] is To realize these purposes, it is essential for our system to
proposed to design an Android smart phone application for use number of sensors which give a considerable amount of
controlling the smart home appliances by using Bluetooth data such as, soil humidity sensor which measures soil
connection technology and Arduino Uno Microcontroller. [3] moisture and compares it with the value stored in the Arduino,
proposed a smart home lighting prototype based smart phone and then activates or deactivates the water pump, and when
for controlling luminaires conveniently and securely via WiFi there is no one at home, this sensor can be used to
or Internet. This system includes a mobile smartphone automatically operate irrigation system, it can sense if the
application, an Arduino controlled luminaire with RGB plants need for water, and this will prevent the plants from
channels and a Raspberry Pi as a central controller. All of the wilting; photo resister that measures the intensity of the light
mentioned literatures which present different technologies are falling on it and compares its value with the value stored in
restricted to limited purposes, but we need a smart home that Arduino and then, Turns on or off the external lights; the
performs various purposes. temperature and humidity sensors which in turn measures the
This paper presents a multi-purpose smart home system temperature of the home and turns on the cooling devices if the
based on a smart phone to remote control and monitors the temperature is greater than 25°, and turns off the cooling

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devices and operates the heating devices if the temperature is

less than 25°, and displays the values of temperature and
humidity on the screen inside Home; Poisonous gases sensor,
which works to give an alert in the event of a leak of gases or
smoke inside the home; the flame sensor that gives an alert if
there is a fire or a fire flame inside the home. The near field
communication (NFC) was used to secure the internal and
external doors of the house, in addition to using of cheap and
low power the passive infrared (PIR) motion sensor to capture
unusual activity at home. The values collected from the sensors
can be displayed on the application's interface in the
smartphone, as well as the possibility of displaying them on a
screen (LCD) inside the home.

Fig. 3 The communication between the boards and the smartphone

The control program written in Java contains a set of buttons

that are used to turn the electronic devices on and off. It also
contains fields that are used to display the data that are brought
from the sensors, which change periodically according to the
change of the home situation. Fig. 4 demonstrates the main
user interface of the Android program.

Fig. 2 The components of the project

Some of the proposed smart home subsystems such as the

external lighting and fire protection are controlling
automatically, in which the sensors are collect the data and
send it to the Microcontroller Arduino for processing it and
giving commands to relay, a switch that provides electricity to
the appliances. And some are controlled remotely by the smart
phone such as the internal and external doors protection system
and the internal lighting system, and in these subsystems the
Arduino through Ethernet shield is connected to a Raspberry Pi
3, that serves as an access point for transmitting the collected
data to the smart phone that in turn displays the outputs and
gives the commands to Arduino to be executed. Fig. 3
illustrated the connection between the electronic boards and the
smartphone. The other subsystems like heating, cooling and
plant irrigation can be operated automatically as well as
controlled remotely by the smart phone.
Fig. 4 A friendly user interface of the Android program.
In the main graphical user interface, we notice at the top that
there is a hidden screen with a black colour that changes its
colour in case there is fire or fire flame. The next field contains
information about the weather, which is brought by rain sensor
and light sensor. The third field contains information about the
temperature and humidity of the house, which is brought by the
temperature and humidity sensor. As for the fields related to
security, the first button is used to open and close the inner
door lock of the house, the second button is used to open and
close the outer door of the house and the third button displays
information if there is movement at home or not. The control
buttons are for the purpose of turning on or off the internal
lighting and the external lighting and to display data about the

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2018 1 International Scientific Conference of Engineering Sciences - 3 Scientific Conference of Engineering Science (ISCES)
degree of humidity of the garden, which is brought by the soil [2]
humidity sensor and through this button, we can turn on and
extinguish the water pump. The last field is responsible for
operating and extinguishing the heating and cooling systems.
In this project, the Linux operating system for the Raspberry [3]
Pi 3 was installed to give it strength and speed. The Raspberry
Pi 3 is used as a server to store the project's web page and is
programmed to be an access point of transmission (Wifi) rather
than a router because of its the small size, low energy
[4]
consumption and high degree of protection in terms of software.
Fig. 5 shows the implementation of a preliminary prototype of
the system.
Fig. 5 The implementation of a system prototyping
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The construction of a comprehensive smart home system
through the application of Android is a major step in the
development of this type of smart systems, which need a
constant development to keep abreast of the enormous
development of technologies. This paper gives a future trend in
developing the smart home systems by presenting a simple,
low cost, flexible and multi-purpose remotely controlling and
monitoring system based on a smart phone with a sophisticated
wireless communication medium (WiFi). This system is
designed with an advanced user friendly interface on Android.
The proposed prototype system was successfully tested and
evaluated by different users. In the future, we plan to integrate
high resolution cameras to improve the Anti-theft protection
subsystem. In addition, we contemplate adding a solar tracking
mechanism to the proposed solar energy subsystem. We are
also intending to build the user application on Windows and
iOS smart phones platform.
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