3rd Int’l Conf.

on Recent Advances in Information Technology | RAIT-2016 |

Voice and Touch Control Home Automation

Sushant Kumar S.S Solanki
Department of Electronics and Communication Eng. Department of Electronics and Communication Eng.
Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra
Ranchi, Jharkhand, India-835215 Ranchi, Jharkhand, India-835215
kumarsushant3009@gmail.com sssolanki@bitmesra.ac.in

Abstract— A fully autonomous home is going to be the

future. Everyone want that the complete control such as
switching on/off the lights, fans, televisions and other
appliances through one device. This paper presents a novel
solution that makes this future a bit nearer. Voice controlled
automation, as well as a universal remote control application
on an Android platform, has been presented. The efficient
utilization of various available apps on Google play store has
been done. Using the Bluetooth module HC-05, Arduino Uno,
and Android application, voice controlled automation, as well
as the universal switch, has been realized. Figure1. Overview of the System Architecture

Keywords— HC-0; AMR Voice; Arduino Uno; Arduino

Bluetooth Control A. The Android applications AMR_Voice and Arduino
Bluetooth control are the user end control.

I. INTRODUCTION
As the technology is advancing the automation in various
fields can easily be seen. Day by day the effort for doing the
daily routine work is decreasing, and it’s necessary for the
busy schedules the people are having as well as for the cost
effectiveness. For example washing machines, autonomous
vacuum cleaner, dishwashers, etc. have reduced the manual
efforts, and it’s quite affordable. Similarly, for the
physically handicapped or elder persons the mobility is quite
a difficult task and they always need some assistance for
doing various tasks. Even when someone returns home
tired, they feel quite difficult to do the simple activities like
approaching the switch board for switching various
appliances, closing curtains or windows, opening the doors,
etc. In this paper, we are going to resolve such problems. By
introducing automatic switching systems that can provide Figure 2.1 AMR_Voice Figure2.2 Arduino Bluetooth control
Application
switching control of various household appliances as well as
some other tasks that constitute the home automation system
[1]. Figure 2.1 and Figure 2.2 show AMR_Voice and Arduino
Bluetooth control respectively the two applications that we
II. THE OVERVIEW OF THE SYSTEM are using in our system, and they are readily available at
ARCHITECTURE Google play store.
The system design consists of Arduino Uno; that acts as
(i) AMR_Voice: - This is a voice -controlled application. As
the main controller, Bluetooth module HC-05 acts as the
shown in the figure on tapping the microphone (mic) icon,
interface between the Android applications and the Arduino.
the voice commands is sent for controlling various
The Android apps “AMR_Voice” [2] and “Arduino
appliances.
Bluetooth Controller” [3] are the main applications for
First step is to tap the mic icon and say something. The
implementing the system. The relays [4], servo motors [5]
speech commands get converted to text. The converted text
and stepper motors [6] are being used for various control
is sent over the Bluetooth of the Android mobile to the serial
purposes. Figure-1 depicts the overview of the system
buffer of Arduino [7] via Bluetooth module HC-05 [8].
architecture.

978-1-4799-8579-1/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

3rd Int’l Conf. on Recent Advances in Information Technology | RAIT-2016 |

From the serial buffer data retrieved for the voice Table2. Voice Commands for the Applications
commands [9-12]. By using Arduino Uno programmer [13] S.No Voice Command Action Performed
1. Curtain Open Opens the curtain
the data strings are compared with lookup table and 2. Curtain Closed Closes the curtain
generated an actuation signal for the relays to control 3. Door open Unlocks the door
various appliances. 4. Door close Locks the door
5. Wind in Opens the window
(ii) Arduino Bluetooth Controller:- 6. Wind out Closes the window
It is another Android application that is also readily
Table3. Touch Commands for the Appliances
available on the GOOGLE Play store. It serves as a touch
S.No Touch Command Action Performed
control application. As shown in Figure 2.2 a total number 1. Device 1 ON Turns on the tube light
of eight (8) devices are controlled using this application. It 2. Device 1 OFF Turns off the tube light
works on the similar principle as depicted above; the only 3. Device 2 ON Turns on the fan
difference is that on touching the control switches on the 4. Device 2 OFF Turns off the fan
5. Device 3 ON Turns on the television
app, converts the action in to characters. It is linked with
6. Device 3 OFF Turns off the television
Bluetooth of the Android mobile to the Arduino serial buffer 7. Device 4 ON Turns on the music system
via Bluetooth Module HC-05. After obtaining the various 8. Device 4 OFF Turns off the music system
characters, the system is so designed that the control 9. Device 5 ON Turns on the computer
strategy for each of the switching action may be actuated 10. Device 5 OFF Turns off the computer
using the relays and actuators.
Table4. Touch Commands for the Applications
S.No Touch Command Action Performed
III. APPLIANCES AND APPLICATIONS IMPLEMENTED 1. Device 6 ON Opens the curtain
This section discusses the various appliances and 2. Device 6 OFF Closes the curtain
3. Device 7 ON Unlocks the door
applications where the testing of the system designed is 4. Device 7 OFF Locks the door
implemented to make a complete automation system. In this 5. Device 8 ON Opens the window
work five appliances and three applications are tested using 6. Device 8 OFF Closes the window
the touch and voice control. They are the switches to
ON/OFF
IV. WORKING
a. Tube light
b. Fan A. AMR_Voice
c. Television
For using the voice commands the following steps are as
d. Music System
follows:-
e. Computer
And the three applications are Step1: Open the AMR_Voice application and click on the
a. Opening and closing of Curtain “Connect Robot” as shown in Figure 3.1 to connect the
b. Opening and closing of door lock application to the Bluetooth module HC-05.
c. Opening and closing of window
The switching control of the appliances and the applications
were performed using the commands as depicted in the
table-1 to 4. Here they are kept in two separate groups due
to the difference in their actuations.
The appliances are actuated using the relays whereas the
motors are working as actuators [14] for the applications.

Table1. Voice Commands for the Appliances Control

S.No Voice Command Action Performed
1. Tube On / Tub Onn Turns on the tube light
2. Tube Off /of Turns off the tube light
3. Fan On/onn Turns on the fan
4. Fan Off/of Turns off the fan
5. TV on/onn Turns on the television
6. TV Off/of Turns off the television
7. Music On/Onn Turns on the music system
8. Music Off/of Turns off the music system
9. Computer On/onn Turns on the computer
10. Computer Off/of Turns off the computer Figure 3.1 Option to connect the app with HC-05

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3rd Int’l Conf. on Recent Advances in Information Technology | RAIT-2016 |
Step2: Once the module is connected tap on the mic icon of
the app as shown in Figure 3.2 and say the command.
Figure 3.2 Touch the mic icon to speak
Step3: Once we speak the app converts the voice to text
using Google voice services that go over the phone
Bluetooth to the Bluetooth module HC-05.
The HC-05 connection with Arduino is as shown in Figure
3.3. Arduino receives the converted text via its serial pins
from the HC-05 module and is present in the serial buffer.
Figure 3.3 Connection diagram of HC-05 and Arduino
Step4: From the serial buffer we get the stored text, and we
use it as the control commands for various purposes.
The code snippet for the purpose is as shown in Figure 3.4
Figure 3.4 Code for using the converted text for control purpose
As shown above in the snippet we can see that at first the
serial buffer is checked for the availability of the voice
978-1-4799-8579-1/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
commands and if present is in the form of text or characters
for touch control. Suppose if the text is “TV on”, it sends a
digital high signal to “led 1”. It is the pin to which the relay
is connected and on getting high it actuates to turn on the
television. Similar is for the touch control that gets actuated
on getting the character “A” and the television is switched
on.
Similarly, the other appliances are operated for different
commands as shown in Table 1.
Now, for the application of curtains, door lock, and window
the commands are similar but the difference is in the
actuation. And instead of the relays the stepper motors are
being used for windows and curtains opening, and closing
and servo motor locks and unlocks the door.
B. Arduino Bluetooth Control
For using the Arduino Bluetooth control for touch control
the following steps follows:-
Step1: Open the Arduino Bluetooth Control Application
and tap on the Connect button which will connect our
application to the HC-05 as shown in Figure 4.1.
Step2: Once the module is connected tap on the OFF/ON
button for the various devices to operate the appliances as
shown in Figure 4.2.
Step3: Once we tap on the buttons shown it sends the pre-
assigned characters for each of the operations to the HC-05
module shown in Table 5. Accordingly the appliances are
operated. The rest of the operation is similar to the step as
described above in STEP 4.
Figure 4.1 Tap Connect to make the connection with HC-05
3rd Int’l Conf. on Recent Advances in Information Technology | RAIT-2016 |

modifications, and more devices can be added.

Voice recognition systems of Google [15] have enhanced. It
is now possible to develop the applications that are highly
capable of detecting the correct voice commands and also to
use it with various languages and accent [16].
These enhancements have made the detections highly error -
free and efficient. Also, Arduino which is an open source
has made possible to realize the difficult tasks quite easily
because of its enriched libraries [17].

REFERENCES
[1]. Mitali Patil, Ashwini Bedara, Varsha Pacharne, “The Design
and Implementation of Voice Controlled Wireless Intelligent
HomeAutomation System based on Zigbee,: Volume 2, Issue 4
April 2013.
[2]. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=robotspace.simple
labs.amr_voice&hl=en
[3]. HTTPS://PLAY.GOOGLE.COM/STORE/APPS/DETAILS?ID=COM.APP.
CONTROL&HL=EN

[4]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/relay
[5]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servomotor
[6]. http://www.engineersgarage.com/articles/stepper-motors
[7]. HTTPS://WWW.ARDUINO.CC/EN/GUIDE/INTRODUCTION
Figure 4.2 Tap the OFF/ON buttons for various appliances control [8]. HTTP://WWW.TEC.REUTLINGEN-
UNIVERSITY.DE/UPLOADS/MEDIA/DATENBLATTHC-05_BT-
Table5. Pre-assigned characters for various operations MODUL.PDF
S.No Device State Character [9]. Ling-Hui Chen, Zhen-Hua Ling, Member, IEEE, Li-Juan Liu,
1. Device 1 OFF a and Li-Rong Dai”Voice Conversion using deep neural networks
2. Device 1 ON A with Layerwise generative training”: IEEE/ACM
3. Device 2 OFF b TRANSACTIONS ON AUDIO, SPEECH, AND LANGUAGE
4. Device 2 ON B PROCESSING, VOL. 22, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014
5. Device 3 OFF c
6. Device 3 ON C [10]. JohnPaul Hosom, Ron Cole, and Mark Fanty “Speech
Recognition Using Neural Networks at the Center for Spoken
7. Device 4 OFF d
Language Understanding” Center for Spoken Language
8. Device 4 ON D Understanding (cslu) Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and
9. Device 5 OFF e Technology July 6, 1999
10. Device 5 ON E [11]. Geoffrey Hinton, Li Deng, Dong Yu, George Dahl, Abdel-
11. Device 6 OFF f rahman Mohamed, Navdeep Jaitly, Andrew Senior, Vincent
12. Device 6 ON F Vanhoucke, Patrick Nguyen, Tara Sainath, and Brian
13. Device 7 OFF g Kingsbury” Deep Neural Networks for Acoustic Modeling in
14 Device 7 ON G Speech Recognition”
15. Device 8 OFF h [12]. Speech recognition Lecture 14: Neural Networks Andrew
16. Device 8 ON H Senior andrewsenior@google.com Google NYC December 12,
2013
[13]. https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP
[14]. HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/ACTUATOR
V. CONCLUSIONS [15]. HTTP://WWW.PHONEARENA.COM/NEWS/THE-SECRET-OF-
GOOGLES-AMAZING-VOICE-RECOGNITION-REVEALED-IT-
The voice and touch control for the home automation WORKS-LIKE-A-BRAIN_ID39938
system are implemented and has been tested successfully.
[16]. HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/GOOGLE_VOICE_SEARCH
While using the voice commands, care must be taken to
[17]. https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/Libraries
have a noise free environment. This system works well in
the range of 20m, as it is the range for the Bluetooth. This
system was targeted for the elderly, physically challenged
and for the convenience of controlling the switches without
actually reaching for it. This system has the scope for

978-1-4799-8579-1/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE