Home Automation

Suppose you are returning home after a long day of work and the only thing you want to do
is to chill now. Rather than doing all the works by yourself such as to turn on air conditioning
or make a coffee, Home Automation can easily do those tasks for you.
This system will include features like temperature control, window control, switch control,
and making coffee/juice. Whatever the appliance is, an Arduino, connected with a Wi Fi
shield, will conduct all the necessary commands to carry out the jobs.

Concept:
When you leave the house, your phone gets disconnected from your home router. The
Arduino with Wi-Fi shield will pick it up and start searching for your phone using GPS tracker
for a certain amount of range. If it does not get back any signal, it will move to the next step
that is to check whether the switches for lights and fans, along with some appliances also,
are turned off or not. Same goes to the windows of your house. If the result is negative,
then the Arduino will do the tasks and prevent wasting electrical power and also saving you
from rain getting inside the house.
The next part is also Wi-Fi and GPS based. After performing all those steps, Arduino will go
into a low powered mode in which it will check every 5 minutes if your phone is within the
GPS range. If it is in the range and the range keeps decreasing over time, it will start air
conditioning system or heater based on the climate to set the temperature of the house to a
comfortable state. It can also open the windows if the weather is good, depending on the
conditions whether you want them or not since it won’t work with air conditioning on, and
also turn on the coffee machine or juice machine for you to have a nice drink as soon as you
get home. After your phone connects to the home Wi-Fi, the Arduino will be turned off and
ready to engage next time you leave.
Now there will definitely be an app through which you can change different settings and
behaviour of the Arduino and also to use the app for different circumstances for opening or
closing any of those systems even if you are at home.

Process:
Temperature controller:
An Arduino nano should be connected with the air conditioning system’s internal
microcontroller circuit and it will receive commands from the main Arduino with Wi-Fi
shield (considering the A/C is not smart). Now, a temperature sensor (e.g. thermistor) will
be attached to the main board or with the nano, whichever is the best place measure
temperature of the house.
Whenever the main Arduino board detects that you’re returning home, it’ll check the
temperature using the sensor reading and adjust by turning on A/C or heater, whichever is
needed and then after adjusting, it’ll turn off that appliance.
It will also work even if you forget to turn off the A/C and leave the house, main Arduino
board will do the task for you as it can detect whether it is on or not.
In its really advanced mode, the main Arduino board can search for weather data in
accuweather.com to get other values like relative humidity, wind pressure, feels like etc. for
calibrating the temperature.

Switch controller:
An Arduino nano with a motor and multiple small levers for multiple switches on top of the
switchboard will be attached. It can be powered by a capable battery or from the power
socket even though battery is preferable as there will be no need for ac/dc converter.
Once again, if the main board detects you are leaving and the nano detects the switches are
left turned on, it’ll turn off the switches.
In its advanced mode, the nano can be hooked to two PIR motion sensor(one is at the door
and another one in the middle of any suitable wall to capture infrared signal) to check
whether you’re in the room or not even if you don’t leave the house and can turn off the
lights and fan preventing the waste of electrical energy.

Window controller:
There will be a thin layer of ‘teeth’ surface which is necessary to move a gear will be placed
on the bottom of the window and a motor will generate power to control the window using
the gear and it will also be powered by capable batteries and conducted by a nano.
On main board’s command, the motor will move the gear forward to close the window or
backward to open the window.

Coffee/Juice maker:
This one is easy, just to put a nano with a motor and a small lever on top of the maker
should do the job.
Now, all the nanos will have a Wi-Fi module connected so that they can contact with the
main board. All these systems can be controlled via an app if you manually want to do those
tasks by using your smartphone.

The main purpose of the main board’s Wi-Fi shield is to monitor your smartphone’s
connection status by being connected to Wi-Fi router of your home and also to
communicate with the smartphone through the app.

This system can also be applicable for more than one phone. As long as all of them are
disconnected from the Wi-Fi, the Arduino will assume there are no one in the house and it
will perform it’s tasks accordingly.

Disclaimer:
The overall system is quite complicated and expensive. It will take quite a bit of hard work to
complete the project but once it is done, it’s usefulness can’t be denied at any means.

(I’ve not attached any circuit schematics or code since it is quite a big project and I’m
planning to work on it very soon. Also, there were no declaration to attach those things in
the instructions.)

(PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THERE’S ANYTHING THAT CAN BE CHANGED OR OPTIMIZED TO

HAVE A BETTER DESIGN BY COMMENTING IN THE REVIEW SECTION.)