Abstract
Home automation is one of the fastest growing topics in recent years, where a large number of products have been introduced to the consumer market. The home automation journey started by with Pico Electronics in 1975 when the X10 protocol was developed based on Power Line Communication or PLC. As technology evolved, since the 1970s many vendors utilized other wired and wireless communication methods, but not many industry standards were adopted as primary method of home automation. On the other hand, the focus of home automation has never spread evenly across all possibilities. Certain devices such as smart door locks have grown out of proportion while some others such as consumer-grade irrigation controllers starve to be fully automated. Furthermore, home automation lacks of a solid platform to control a number of devices from a single point. A large contributing factor to this fragmentation is the lack of a solid industry standard as mentioned above followed by proprietary protocols developed by vendors. The objective of this project is to design a networked system to control and automate many functions in a house as well as monitoring the environment. The proposed system solves many of the existing limitations. A centralized controller carries the task of connecting the system to the outside world over Ethernet. Up to 255 devices can be connected to the central unit via low power Zigbee wireless technology. These devices control and monitor lights, doors and windows, garage doors and vehicles, garden irrigation and air conditioning system, just to name a few. Most of these controllers can function as a part of the network and capable of being adjusted locally and function as a standalone device. The strong point of this system is being wireless, which enables the consumer to expand the system in the future as needed with minimum hassle and time.