CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

Decades of years ago, building automation systems are commonplace in office,

commercial and industrial constructions. Airports, commercial centers, hospitals and

factories are all built with automated controlling systems to create the best possible

indoor conditions. Yet, homes where people spend most of their time are built nearly

without any automation. Still the automation systems could improve health, energy‐

conservation and comfort.

But recently home automation product for intelligent home is increasingly getting very

common. By the help of home automation technologies living is becoming easier.

With the widespread application of the mobile networking technologies, the term

‘automated home’ is no longer alien to us as it was a few years ago. Alternatively

referred to as Intelligent Homes, Smart Homes and several other terminologies over the

years. The term automated homes simply indicates the automation of daily chores with

reference to the equipments in the house. To this end, this project presents the design and

implementation of a project “HOME AUTOMATION BY SMS”. The design intends to

rely on cheap and commercially available devices and services.

The past projects had concentrated mostly on the end users, especially on the elderly and

disabled users who benefit from automation the most. Electrical industry is very

conservative and thus the changes within the field are slow. However, small changes in
 procedures can make significant improvements in the workflow and accuracy of the

home automation.

1.2 AIM AND OBJECTIVE

• This project is to design and develop a home automation that controls home

appliance through mobile. This is SMS based and uses wireless technology to

revolutionize the standard of living. This has very much influence in our current and

future life. The concept of automated home is an emerging issue to the modern

technology dependent society.

• Controlling devices using switches are common. From a few decades controlling

devices using remote control switches like infrared remote control switch, light

activated switches are becoming popular. But all these technology have their

limitations. Laser beam are harmful to human kind.

This system does not require any radiations, any laser beam which has no limitation

of range; it can be used from any distance from meters to thousands kilometers using

a mobile phone.

• To provide a cost effective solution that will provide feedback mechanism and

report the status of the appliances to the user.

1.3 SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The project “HOME AUTOMATION BY SMS” is intended to automate the certain

functions of home appliances. The main scope of this project is that we can control our home
 from anywhere in the world where GSM network is available. This could be simple remote

control of lights, appliances or more complex functionalities. Automated home technologies

have been around for about 30 years, mostly relying on some proprietary technologies and

applications. With the recent expansion of communication networks, automated home

applications can be further enhanced with new dimension of capabilities that were not

available before. In particular, wireless access technologies will soon enable more exotic and

economically feasible applications.

The device is much helpful in controlling home. It reduces the wastage of valuable time and

our daily life become easier and flexible.

1.4 MODE OF OPERATION

The microcontroller PIC16f877 is the heart of this project. It controls the entire unit. These

microcontrollers have five ports. A GSM phone is connected to a programmed 16f877

microcontroller which would receive the SMS from a reference cell phone. The control

signal part of the received SMS is extracted and is changed to microcontroller-preferred

format. The mobile phone also sends back the status of the appliances back to the user. I have

selected GSM because the ubiquity of its standard makes international roaming very common

between mobile phone operators, enabling subscribers to use their phones in many parts of

the world. A PC which is connected to the micro-controller using a serial communication

through RS232 can be used for monitoring and transmission of the control signals to the

modem. AT commands were used for controlling the functionality of modem. The output of

the microcontroller is used to activate a high current relay used.

1.5 MODE OF DESIGN

The design of this project can be outlined in five categories. The power supply, the

Microcontroller, the Mobile Device, the Interfacing circuit and relay circuit.

1. The power supply is majorly a combination of a full wave rectifying circuit, blocking or

smoothing capacitor, the 12V and 5V regulators. Power supply powers the whole circuit

and charges the battery.

There is a battery embedded in the circuit that will power the circuit when there are no

mains to allow the microcontroller to perform the feedback features.

The battery charging circuit is trivial. The charging current is limited to a low value so

that the battery does not overcharge. This will also charge the embedded phone’s battery

in the project.

2. The microcontroller used are low-cost computers-in-a-chip; they allow electronics

designers and hobbyists add intelligence and functions that mimic big computers for

almost any electronic product or project.

The programming of the system is done using a PIC micro controller 16F877. This

powerful (200 nanosecond instruction execution) yet easy-to-program (only 35 single

word instructions) CMOS FLASH-based 8-bit micro controller packs Microchip's

powerful PIC® architecture into a 40-pin package and is upwards compatible with the

PIC16C5X, PIC12CXXX and PIC16C7X devices. It is has five ports. I.e. port A, port B,

port C, port D, port E. The PIC 16F877 has flash memory of 8K and Data memory of 368

bytes Data EEPROM of 256 bytes.

3. The Mobile device receives SMS from another remote phone and convert it to the

microcontroller format through the AT command and transmit through the in-built serial
 communication interfaces of the phone used. The two pins that are commonly used are

Transmit Data (TXD) and Receive Data (RXD).

4. The interfacing circuit is a circuit that will make it possible for the project to be

monitored through a system. Also it allows communication to the microcontroller serially. A

serial port transmits a ‘1’ as -3V to -25V and a ‘0’ as +3V to +25V. This consist majorly the

RS232 and the MAX232 IC.

5. The relays used are the high current relay that provides mains supply to the load, as

dictated by the PIC. For high current loads (like A.C), the relay controls a contactor which

controls the load. The normal relay can only control loads that do not exceed 1,000W in

capacity.

The block diagram is shown below.

POWER MICROCONTROL DEVICE
DRIVER
SUPPLY LER

INTERFACE

GSM PHONE

GSM OF THE
USER

FIGURE1.0 BLOCK DIAGRAM OF HOME

AUTOMATION BY SMS