Smart Home Systems Based on Internet of Things

*Menachem Domb*

## **Abstract**

Smart home systems achieved great popularity in the last decades as they increase the comfort and quality of life. Most smart home systems are controlled by smartphones and microcontrollers. A smartphone application is used to control and monitor home functions using wireless communication techniques. We explore the concept of smart home with the integration of IoT services and cloud computing to it, by embedding intelligence into sensors and actuators, networking of smart things using the corresponding technology, facilitating interactions with smart things using cloud computing for easy access in different locations, increasing computation power, storage space and improving data exchange efficiency. In this chapter we present a composition of three components to build a robust approach of an advanced smart home concept and implementation.

**Keywords:** smart home, IoT, cloud computing, event processing, home appliances, rule-based event processing

## **1. Introduction**

Classic smart home, internet of things, cloud computing and rule-based event processing, are the building blocks of our proposed advanced smart home integrated compound. Each component contributes its core attributes and technologies to the proposed composition. IoT contributes the internet connection and remote management of mobile appliances, incorporated with a variety of sensors. Sensors may be attached to home related appliances, such as air-conditioning, lights and other environmental devices. And so, it embeds computer intelligence into home devices to provide ways to measure home conditions and monitor home appliances' functionality. Cloud computing provides scalable computing power, storage space and applications, for developing, maintaining, running home services, and accessing home devices anywhere at anytime. The rule-based event processing system provides the control and orchestration of the entire advanced smart home composition.

Combining technologies in order to generate a best of breed product, already appear in recent literature in various ways. Christos Stergioua et al. [1] merge cloud computing and IoT to show how the cloud computing technology improves the functionality of the IoT. Majid Al-Kuwari [2] focus on embedded IoT for using analyzed data to remotely execute commands of home appliances in a smart home. Trisha Datta et al. [3] propose a privacy-preserving library to embed traffic shaping in home appliances. Jian Mao et al. [4] enhance machine learning algorithms to play a role in the security in a smart home ecosystem. Faisal Saeed et al. [5] propose using sensors to sense and provide in real-time, fire detection with high accuracy.

In this chapter we explain the integration of classic smart home, IoT and cloud computing. Starting by analyzing the basics of smart home, IoT, cloud computing and event processing systems. We discuss their complementarity and synergy, detailing what is currently driving to their integration. We also discuss what is already available in terms of platforms, and projects implementing the smart home, cloud and IoT paradigm. From the connectivity perspective, the added IoT appliances and the cloud, are connected to the internet and in this context also to the home local area network. These connections complement the overall setup to a complete unified and interconnected composition with extended processing power, powerful 3rd party tools, comprehensive applications and an extensive storage space.

In the rest of this chapter we elaborate on each of the four components. In Section 1, we describe the classic smart home, in Section 2, we introduce the internet of things [IoT], in Section 3, we outline cloud computing and in Section 4, we present the event processing module. In Section 5, we describe the composition of an advanced smart home, incorporating these four components. In Section 6, we provide some practical information and relevant selection considerations, for building a practical advanced smart home implementation. In Section 7, we describe our experiment introducing three examples presenting the essence of our integrated proposal. Finally, we identify open issues and future directions in the future of advanced smart home components and applications.

## **2. Classic smart home overview**

Smart home is the residential extension of building automation and involves the control and automation of all its embedded technology. It defines a residence that has appliances, lighting, heating, air conditioning, TVs, computers, entertainment systems, big home appliances such as washers/dryers and refrigerators/freezers, security and camera systems capable of communicating with each other and being controlled remotely by a time schedule, phone, mobile or internet. These systems consist of switches and sensors connected to a central hub controlled by the home resident using wall-mounted terminal or mobile unit connected to internet cloud services.

Smart home provides, security, energy efficiency, low operating costs and convenience. Installation of smart products provide convenience and savings of time, money and energy. Such systems are adaptive and adjustable to meet the ongoing changing needs of the home residents. In most cases its infrastructure is flexible enough to integrate with a wide range of devices from different providers and standards.

The basic architecture enables measuring home conditions, process instrumented data, utilizing microcontroller-enabled sensors for measuring home conditions and actuators for monitoring home embedded devices.

The popularity and penetration of the smart home concept is growing in a good pace, as it became part of the modernization and reduction of cost trends. This is achieved by embedding the capability to maintain a centralized event log, execute machine learning processes to provide main cost elements, saving recommendations and other useful reports.

#### **2.1 Smart home services**

#### *2.1.1 Measuring home conditions*

A typical smart home is equipped with a set of sensors for measuring home conditions, such as: temperature, humidity, light and proximity. Each sensor is

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*Smart Home Systems Based on Internet of Things DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84894*

infrastructure.

issued to the actuator.

*2.1.3 Controlling home access*

**2.2 The main components**

use face recognition systems, finger print and RFID.

pares the scanned ID against the authorized IDs in the database.

is composed of the following components, as described in **Figure 1**.

transferred via the local network, to the smart home server.

API can process sensors data or manage necessary actions.

data is then processed by the local server processes.

*2.1.2 Managing home appliances*

dedicated to capture one or more measurement. Temperature and humidity may be measured by one sensor, other sensors calculate the light ratio for a given area and the distance from it to each object exposed to it. All sensors allow storing the data and visualizing it so that the user can view it anywhere and anytime. To do so, it includes a signal processer, a communication interface and a host on a cloud

Creates the cloud service for managing home appliances which will be hosted on a cloud infrastructure. The managing service allows the user, controlling the outputs of smart actuators associated with home appliances, such as such as lamps and fans. Smart actuators are devices, such as valves and switches, which perform actions such as turning things on or off or adjusting an operational system. Actuators provides a variety of functionalities, such as on/off valve service, positioning to percentage open, modulating to control changes on flow conditions, emergency shutdown (ESD). To activate an actuator, a digital write command is

Home access technologies are commonly used for public access doors. A common system uses a database with the identification attributes of authorized people. When a person is approaching the access control system, the person's identification attributes are collected instantly and compared to the database. If it matches the database data, the access is allowed, otherwise, the access is denied. For a wide distributed institute, we may employ cloud services for centrally collecting persons' data and processing it. Some use magnetic or proximity identification cards, other

In an example implementation, an RFID card and an RFID reader have been used. Every authorized person has an RFID card. The person scanned the card via RFID reader located near the door. The scanned ID has been sent via the internet to the cloud system. The system posted the ID to the controlling service which com-

To enable all of the above described activities and data management, the system

a.Sensors to collect internal and external home data and measure home conditions. These sensors are connected to the home itself and to the attachedto-home devices. These sensors are not internet of things sensors, which are attached to home appliances. The sensors' data is collected and continually

b.Processors for performing local and integrated actions. It may also be connected to the cloud for applications requiring extended resources. The sensors'

c.A collection of software components wrapped as APIs, allowing external applications execute it, given it follows the pre-defined parameters format. Such an

dedicated to capture one or more measurement. Temperature and humidity may be measured by one sensor, other sensors calculate the light ratio for a given area and the distance from it to each object exposed to it. All sensors allow storing the data and visualizing it so that the user can view it anywhere and anytime. To do so, it includes a signal processer, a communication interface and a host on a cloud infrastructure.
