2010 Fourth Asia International Conference on Mathematical/Analytical Modelling and Computer Simulation
A New Intelligent Remote Control System for Home Automation and Reduce Energy
Consumption
Manouchehr Ghahramanian Golzar
AsanPardazan Co.
Tehran, Iran
fg.ece.ut@gmail.com
Abstract — This paper presents the design and implementation of
an internet-based smart remote control system for home
automation, dedicated to power management that adapts power
consumption to available power resources according to user
comfort and cost criteria. Sensors and home appliances are
connected to the designed and implemented control panel and
then they are monitored and controlled from every corner of the
world through the Internet cloud. The system is scalable and
allows additional appliances to be added to it with no major
changes to its core. New communication format is proposed to
enable communication between the control panel and the server
as well. To verify the principle operation of the design, some
home applications are experimentally tested. Experimental results
show the efficiency and accuracy of proposed intelligent control
system in terms of energy saving and being user friendly.
Key Words — Home Automation System, remote controlling
system, energy saving, intelligent control system.
I. INTRODUCTION
In a modern house, the number of electronic devices keeps
increasing. Houses may be equipped with many modern
appliances, ranging from hi-fi sets, televisions, personal
computers, smart fridges and washing machines, doorbells,
light switches, thermostats and so on. Sensors report activities
in the house. Reporting activities is necessary for making
intelligent decisions; For example, switching off the lights in
empty rooms, while no sensor has reported any activity in
them. They could also serve as burglar alarms. Surveillance
cameras may monitor the doors. Electronic energy meters, gas
meters and water meters report the amount of usage
periodically and automatically without human intervention [1,
7]. The surveillance camera can instruct the heating system to
switch on the heater, order the lighting system to switch on the
lights in the hall and the living room, and tell the television to
play the preferred channel when the owner approaches the
front door. It can activate the alarm system when unrecognized
people try to break in. These devices need to be updated and
managed from time to time. Each device offers services from
different service providers [1, 3, 4]. Remote management is
preferable, since service providers would wish to update or
interact with all devices that run their services in a large
geographic area without visiting each of them. In the extreme
case, we cannot visit these devices, since there are too many of
them, and we may not even know where they are located
exactly [1]. The above scenario is an instance of a domestic
pervasive system. That is, a system consisting of a large group
of small or embedded devices interconnected and spread all
through a modern family home. Pervasive computing (also
known as ubiquitous computing, everywhere [8].) refers to the
978-0-7695-4062-7/10 $26.00 © 2010 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/AMS.2010.46
HamidReza Tajozzakerin
AsanPardazan Co.
Tehran, Iran
tajozzakerin@gmail.com
integration of systems into their environment, to build context-
aware systems and services that are invisible and blended into
the surroundings [1]. It has been more than a decade since
Mark Weiser’s seminal work unveiled the vision of ubiquitous
computing as the emerging model for “computing in the 21st
century”. The vision was to create smart environments
saturated with computing and communication capabilities, yet
gracefully integrated with human users. The rapid growth in
wireless communication and networking technologies,
diversification in personal communication services, and
introduction of feature-rich portable/mobile terminals have
contributed significantly toward the eventual realization of that
vision [3, 5]. The domestic environment has long been seen as
an opportunity space for the deployment of ubiquitous
computing devices, with much research being focused on
understanding the workings of modern households. Findings of
such studies are used to better inform deployments of
“ubicomp” devices into purpose built homes of the future [2,
6]. These buildings bear little resemblance to the actual homes
of the core housing stock which have typically evolved in size
and infrastructure over the years [2, 4]. As part of a study into
ubiquitous computing in domestic environments we wished to
monitor and control appliances and the total amount of energy
usage in a house [2]. Our proposed and implemented solution
is one of the most interested subjects of the world nowadays.
In this paper we discuss the design, development and
implementation algorithms of our controlling system for home
automation.
II. REVIEW
For the next decades, the two major problems concerning
energy are the greenhouse effect and the depletion of petrol
resources especially the energy provided by oil and gas.
Therefore, by conscience or by necessity, the resort to
renewable resources of energy such as wind or solar radiations
arrives in the buildings knowing that the building represents
47% of the energy consumption and it is responsible for 25%
of the greenhouse effect [1, 3]. Moreover, undoubtedly the
user will be confronted by variable tariffs of energy according
to the hour and the days and to the energy producers. It is in
this varied and dynamic context of production and
consumption of energy that a building, equipped with a HAS1
to control the energy, takes its importance. The role of HAS
dedicated to power management is to adapt the power
consumption to the available power resources taking into
1
Home Automation System
174
account user comfort criteria: it permits to limit the use of
supplementary resources which require additional investment
and to avoid the expensive need of maintenance. A Home
Automation system has to reach a compromise between the
priorities of the user in terms of comfort and cost while
satisfying technological constraints [1, 5]. On the other hand,
due to significant advances in Internet and computer
technology, the Internet has started to serve as a medium that
is used in home automation systems, which provide many
features ranging from efficient use of energy to increased
comfort. Home automation means the application of
automation and information technologies for the energy
management in buildings such as schools, hospitals, public
edifices, private houses and so on. A younger sister of building
automation is Domotics (Domestic Robotics), which is
actually the application of the same techniques and tools in a
domestic scenario, instead of a very big building. In this
domain, the cost is still very high and also is the most
important limitation to the popularity of these systems.
Moreover, the lack of standardization and uniformity of
communication protocols for home automation systems (i.e.
Konnex–EIB®, MyHome BTicino®, and Lonworks®, to
mention a few) is often a trouble for technicians required to
design and install such plants, especially when the plant has to
be installed in a pre-existing building whose electrical cabling
is not prearranged to support that level of automation [4].
However, home automation systems have not yet received
broad acceptance and attention. This is mainly due to its high
communication cost and complexity as well as the lack of
security and flexibility. Fei-Yue WANG et al. proposed an
Internet application that allows local and remote monitoring
and control of a home [9]. The application was implemented
on a single chip system with network interface, although the
system embedded TCP/IP protocol and can be accessed and
controlled over the Internet, due to the hardware limitation of
the single chip system, the system is less flexible and scalable.
AR Al-Ali and M. AL-Rousan have built a home automation
system [8] as well. Although the system is able to control,
monitor, and interact with the home appliances over the
Internet, the system requires a static IP address for the home
Web server and the communication between the home web
server and the embedded system board is done by parallel port.
However, the ISP1 usually allocates available IP addresses to
subscribers in a dynamic way to use the limited number of IP
addresses efficiently, a subscriber who wants to use a static IP
address means to pay more than a subscriber who uses a
dynamic IP address. Access to a static IP address is impossible
in some cases. Also communication via parallel ports has
many disadvantages for home usage, such as more wires and
shorter communication distances. The studies presented in [2]
have enriched the field of the Web-based real time
applications. Experiments have been conducted over the
Internet. Although these systems can be easily migrated
1 2
Internet service provider
175
towards home automation, the use of the ready made software
packages and special hardware makes the system more
expensive and complex and less flexible.
In this paper, we present an attractive low-cost solution for
home automation system dedicated to power management that
adapts power consumption to available power resources over
the Internet. Appliances at home are connected to an
embedded controller. The monitor and control program on the
embedded controller operates the appliances and
communicates with the website that resides on the PC based
home Web server. DDNS2 technology is used to fix the
dynamic IP address to a static domain name; it allows the
home Web server to be more easily accessible. Password
security is imposed when the remote user logs into the system.
Via the Internet access, home owners can remotely monitor
and control almost any home appliances. Local control is also
offered in our design. Furthermore, the system is flexible and
scalable. Additional home appliances can be integrated into
the system with a little modification.
III. OUR SOLUTION
Our proposed HAS consists of two major sub-systems:
hardware sub-system and software sub-system. General
architecture of designed and implemented control system is
shown in figure 1. As shown in this figure, one can access to
his home based web server from every where in the world and
after he logged in successfully, he is able to monitor his home
or office via a “control panel”. All sensors and home
appliances are connected directly to this control panel.
Figure 1. General architecture of our proposed intelligent control system
for home automation
A. Hardware Sub-System
Hardware architecture of the proposed HAS is shown in
Figure 2. The embedded controller is selected from AVR
family (i.e. ATMEGA32). A micro-controller, a touch panel, a
graphical LCD display, several sensors of different types,
several on/off actuators (relays) and a USB port construct the
system. The micro-controller has eight A/D converter channels
and thirty two digital input/output (I/O) ports.
Dynamic Domain Name Service

Figure 2. Proposed HAS hardware architecture
Home appliances such as light equipments, air conditioners
and water heaters are connected to the digital I/O ports of the
micro-controller via relays. Each relay carries sufficient
current (i.e. 30 Amperes) and voltage compatibility for home
appliances. A USB port is also considered for data
communication. Since the micro-controller has eight A/D
channels and thirty two I/O ports, more home appliances can
be added to it without changing the system design and
connections. In practice less than 32 sensors/actuators are
required even in a big house.
Home appliances are switched ON or OFF while they are
connecting to the corresponding actuators (in this case the
relays). Being switched ON or OFF is based on the decisions
made by the developed algorithms for the control panel’s
embedded controller. Control panel’s embedded controller
operates in two modes: Manual control mode and PC-based
control mode. In the first mode decisions are made by an
authenticated residence based on the entered instructions from
the touch panel module. In the latter mode, decisions are made
by the control panel based on the commands from the home
based web server which is connected to the control panel via
USB port. We need to use a hardware interface to translate
“RS-232” packets into USB packets and vice versa, though.
This module is called “UHV-05” developed by “Hankell” [9].
Figure 3 shows our implemented hardware sub-system.
B. Software Sub-System
Proposed HAS software sub-system architecture is
illustrated in figure 4. it consists of a web site running on the
home based web server, and a SQL Server based data base.
User can log in through the web site and then he would be able
to see the remote controlling web page, monitor the sensors’
values and actuators’ states and also change the state of the
actuators. Information about sensors’ values and actuators’
states are stored in the data base. In this data base, witch is
based on the SQL Server, there are two types of tables: one for
storing sensors’ information and another for storing actuators’
information. Figure 5 shows the fields of the “Sensors” table
which keeps the first type of information and figure 6 shows
the fields of the “Actuators” table which keeps the second
information. The fields “Unique_ID”, “Zone_Number”,
“Type” and “Name” carry equal concepts in both tables.
“Unique_ID” contains an integer which is assigned to a
sensor/actuator uniquely. “Zone_Number” is the number of the
Zone which the sensor/actuator is located in. “Type” gets one
of the values: “sensor” or “actuator”. “Name” is the name of
the sensor/actuator; for example “Gas” or “Temperature”. The
filed “Number” indicates the number of the sensor/actuator in
the zone because there may be more than one sensor/actuator
of specific type in a zone; for example we may have 3 gas
detector sensors in zone number 3. In the “Sensors” table we
have the field “Value” which contains the value of the sensor.
The analogue value of the sensors are converted to digital data
by means of the internal analogue to digital converter (A/D) of
the embedded micro controller which is an “AVR-Atmega-
32”. This micro controller has a 10 bits internal A/D. Finally
we have the field “State” in the “Actuators” table which is a
one bit data which can show the states “ON” or “OFF”.
Figure 3. Implemented hardware sub-system
C. Proposed Algorithm
Figure 7 shows the developed algorithm for the control
panel’s embedded controller which is operating in PC-based
control mode and figure 13 shows the developed algorithm for
the control panel’s embedded controller which is operating in
manual control mode. As shown in figure 7 (a) through 7 (d), it
is important to know if a predefined zone is currently occupied
or not. Figure 8 shows how decision about zone’s occupation
is made using the state machines. The signal “occupancy” in
this figure rises from motion detection sensors applied for that
zone. If after a while no motion or no presence of human is
sensed by the sensors in that zone, a “Un-Occupancy” signal
will be generated and then the state will change accordingly.
Transition between two describes control modes is shown in
figure 9.
D. Proposed Communication Format
We have introduced a new communication format to enable
communication between the control panel and the home based
web server. Data packets in this protocol consist of the fields
that are shown in figure 10. Maximum length of the proposed
data packets is 30 characters. This means that the
communication between embedded controller and the PC is
fully textual. Meaning of each field is just described in the
section “Software Sub-system”. Fields are separated by a “dot”
176
character (‘.’) from each other. After data packet generation by
the control panel or the web server, it will be mapped to the
“RS-232” data packets format, then we have a Byte-Oriented
transition via physical layer. “RS-232” data packets consist of
a start bit, 7 or 8 data bits, parity bits (optional), and 1 or 2
stop bit(s). We are able to consider two situations: data packet
format for sensors and data packet format for actuators. These
two situations are best illustrated in figures 11 and 12.

Start Computer Based Mode

Is Finished Button Pushed?

Yes

No
End

Zone Number = 0

Figure 4. Proposed HAS software architecture

Is any message received from local server

recently?
Yes

No

Extract the zone number, actuator type, and actuator number

from received message

Do on/off the actuator according to the message.

Figure 5. Fields of the sensors table which keeps the sensors’ Read appropriate actuator’s recent state.
information

Send appropriate actuator’s recent state to the local

server

Zone Number = Zone Number +1

Figure 6. Fields of the actuators table which keeps the actuators’

information P

For example in figure 11 we have a packet which contains

the following information: the forth temperature sensor which
is located in zone number 5 has the value “24” degrees celsius.
As another example figure 12 shows a packet in which (a)
contains the following information: the third light actuator
which is located in zone number 7 is “ON” right now.
Introduced packets are mapped in “Data” segment of the well
known TCP packets of the TCP-IP protocol.

177
 P Q

Yes
Sensor Type = 0 Is the average value in its
regular boundaries?

B
No

Yes Create notification alarms.

Are all sensors types surveyed?

E Send notification alarm to the local

No
server with the zone number,
sensor type and its value.
Sensor Type = Sensor Type + 1

Sensor Number = 0
B

(c)

Are all sensors of current Yes

type surveyed?

Yes

No Is the desired zone

occupied right now?

Sensor Number = Sensor Number + 1 No

Has a long time past Yes

Read sensor value. since last
occupation?

No

Make average value from sensed values.

Turn off unnecessary
energy consumer appliances
in that zone.

Send the zone number, sensor type, and

average value to the local server.

Are all zones

surveyed?
Q Yes

No
(b)

(d)
Figure 7 (a-d). Developed algorithm for the control panel’s embedded
micro controller in PC-based control mode

178
 Occupancy
Unoccupancy
operation of this example, we highlight the function of control
module described in section II. The output of the I/O module
is connected to a single LED. The LED is connected between
Start
Unoccupancy one pin (digital output) and the pin Ground. In order to control
(Time out)
Zone is
occupied
Zone is a lamp that operates at higher voltages than 2.75V, which is
unoccupied
usually the case, an additional circuit is needed as shown in
figure 14, The circuit consists of the followings: a general
purpose NPN transistor like 2n2222, 12V DC power supply,
Occupancy 220 Ω resistances, a relay, and 220 or 110 V light bulb. I.e.
we have applied the implemented system in the company’s
building and experimental results for a 24 hours period shows
Figure 8. Decision making about zone’s occupation using the state
that the system has stopped to turn on three 200 watts lamps
machines
10 times.
Key Pressed Start Manual
Mode

Manual PC-Based
Start Control Time out Control Input desired
Mode Mode B zone
number.

Key Pressed
Input desired sensor
or actuator type and
its number.

Figure 9. Transition between two control modes

Is desired
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS type a
Yes

sensor?
In order to verify the principle of the proposed system
operation, three applications are implemented and tested, No Is desired
No
type a
according to the flowcharts given in figures 7, 8 and 9. Extract new order sensor?
for desired
Applications are lamp on/off control, air conditioner control actuator.

and intrusion detection system respectively. Yes

Turn off desired

actuator.
Is desired No
actuator on?

Yes
Turn Extract new order
No for desired
on?
Turn actuator.
Figure 10. Data packet format for application layer off?

Yes
Yes

A
Turn off desired Turn on desired
actuator. actuator.

A
A
Figure 11. Data packet format for sensors

Report the new

status to local B B
server.

Figure 10. Developed algorithm for the control panel’s embedded

Figure 12. Data packet format for actuators controller in manual control mode.

A. Lamp On-Off Control

Let’s assume that the user wants to control remotely a lamp
(light). He selects "lamp on" for ON light and "lamp off" for
OFF light as control messages. By selecting desired command,
the control message will be processed by the system. If the
received message is not "lamp on" the system will reject it. But
if the message is "lamp on", the lamp will turn on. The lamp
will not change until a message "lamp off" is received. The Figure 14. Lamps On-Off Control example
lamp will not be affected if any message is received except
"lamp off" which will turn off the lamp. To implement the

179
B. Air conditioner On-Off Control
As another experiment, by sending the right instruction like
what shown in figure 15, we are able to turn ON the first air
conditioner which is located in zone #3.
Figure 15. Air conditioner On-Off Control example
After the control panel received this instruction, it checks
weather the corresponding actuator has the state “ON” or
“OFF”. If the state is “OFF”, the corresponding actuator will
be turned “ON” by the control panel and the states will be
updated in the “Actuators” data base. Figure 16 shows the air
conditioner control circuitry.
Figure 16. Air conditioner control circuitry
C. Intrusion Detection System
As our third experiment, we used a PIR sensor to detect the
moving person who wants to come inside with no pre-
permissions. After he came into the PIR’s sight area, this
sensor reports this situation to the control panel and then, the
control panel detects that a critical situation is happening right
now. Due to this, the control panel turns the intrusion alarm
actuator on. This concept best illustrated in figure 17.
Figure 17. Intrusion detection system
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
Design and implementation of an internet based intelligent
control system for home automation was introduced in this
paper. The design and implementation was based on an
embedded controller which is connected to a home web-server
which enables communication via USB port. Home appliances
were monitored and controlled via the designed and
implemented control panel from every where in the world
through the Internet cloud. By applying the proposed system
and also efficient algorithms, we are also able to stop wasting
unwilling energy consumption or in other words, we are able
to save the energy. Experimental results show efficiency of the
presented home automation system in terms of energy saving
and being user comfortable. The system is scalable and new
devices can be added with no changes to the core of the micro
controller and the home web server but still there are some
limitations such as remote connection delays and actuator
status feedback information.
REFERENCES
[1] Bert Bos, Lukasz Chmielewski Jaap-Henk Hoepman1 Thanh Son
Nguyen, ”Remote Management and Secure Application Development
for Pervasive Home Systems Using JASON”, Third International
Workshop on Security Privacy and Trust in Pervasive and Ubiquitous
Computing (SecPerU 2007)
[2] E. Harris, R. Krishna, D. Chalmers, G. Fitzpatrick, M. Stringer, “From
Development In the Laboratory to Deployment in the Home”, 32nd
IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, IEEE, 2007
[3] Miguel A. Valero, Laura Vadillo, Ana Peñalver, Iván Pau, Esther Gago,
Marisa Martin, Magdalena González y Eloy Portillo, ”An
Implementation Framework for Smart Home Telecare Services”, Future
generation communication and networking (fgcn), IEEE, 2007
[4] Jun PAN, Yasuaki INOUE, and Zheng LIANG, ” An Energy
Management Circuit for Self-Powered Ubiquitous Sensor Modules
Using Vibration-Based Energy”, IEICE TRANS. FUNDAMENTALS,
VOL.E90–A, NO.10 OCTOBER 2007
[5] Abhishek Roy, Sajal K. Das, and Kalyan Basu,” A Predictive
Framework for Location-Aware Resource Management in Smart
Homes”, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MOBILE COMPUTING, VOL.
6, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2007
[6] Eric D. Williams, H. Scott Matthews,” Scoping the Potential of
Monitoring and Control Technologies to Reduce Energy Use in
Homes”, Proceedings of International Symposium on the Electronics &
the Environment, IEEE, 2007
[7] Felipe Mateos, Victor M Gonzdlez , Reyes Poo, Marta Garcia and
Rosana Olaiz,” Design and Development of an Automatic Small-Scale
House for Teaching Domotics”, 31” ASEEIIEEE Frontiers in Education
Conference, October 10 - 13, 2001 Reno, NV
[8] A. Greenfield. Every ware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous
Computing. New Riders Press, March 2006.
[9] www.usb-ir.com
[10] R. C. Elsenpeter and Toby J. Velte, “Build Your Own Smart Home”,
McGrawHill, 2003.
[11] “Design: Interior and Exterior Lighting and Controls”, Unified Facilities
Criteria (UFC) 3-530-01, department of defense, United States of
America, 22 August 2006, www.novarcontrols.com
[12] IQ-SBS LCU-1, Application Manual, www.novarcontrols.com
[13] www.energydesignersources.com
180