Home Intelligent System Based on Embedded
Internet
T.Kirupavathy
M.E. (Embedded and Real Time Systems)
Dept Of EEE
P.S.G. College of Technology
Coimbatore
kirupa_t@yahoo.co.in
Abstract— Aim of home automation is to control home
devices from a central control point. In this paper, we present the
design and implementation of a low cost but yet flexible and
secure internet based home automation system. The system is
designed to be low cost and flexible with the increasing variety of
devices to be controlled. The design is based on a stand alone
embedded system board integrated into a PC-based server at
home. The home appliances are connected to the input/output
ports of the embedded system board and their status are passed
to the server through Ethernet interface. The home appliances
can be monitored and controlled locally via the embedded system
board, or remotely through a web browser from anywhere in the
world provided that an Internet access is available. The system is
scalable and allows multi-vendor appliances to be added with no
major changes to its core. Password protection is used to block
unauthorized users from accessing the appliances at home. If the
Internet connection is down or the server is not up, the
embedded system board still can control and operate the
appliances locally. ARM cortex family of processor (LM3S6965)
is used in this proposed system.
Index Terms – Home Automation, Embedded System, LM3S6965,
internet, server.
I INTRODUCTION
Due to the rapid development in computer and network
technology, the use of Internet has been expanding
exponentially. It is now extensively used as a reference tool for
personal, educational, commercial, and industrial use. For
many years the Internet has been used extensively in browsing
homepages, searching for information, chatting, downloading
and uploading information. Due to the rapid development of
new technologies such as JAVA, the Internet has also started to
serve as a medium that allows monitoring, control, and
interaction with machine and devices. The Internet can be used
in home automation which provides many features ranging
from efficient use of energy to increased comfort, greater
safety and security. Even over large distances the user can
1
C.L.Vasu
Asst. Professor,
Dept Of EEE,
PSG College of Technology,
Coimbatore
clv@eee.psgtech.edu
monitor and control his/her home gate, oven, refrigerator and
water the garden without any human intervention.
This paper introduces a solution for embedded system, access
internet, through which we can remote access, monitor and
maintain conveniently. The solution is based on web
technology. ARM cortex (LM3S6965) receives the monitored
information from sensor module and processes based on the
collected information. Web server maintains the information
about the home environment. The designed system will be
open to expansion and will enable control of different types of
devices. The system is designed to be low cost however at the
same time more flexible alternative with respect to similar
systems.
II LITERATURE REVIEW
Designing a home automation system for monitoring and
Controlling various devices in remote locations can be done
through a variety of communication options such as wireless
LAN technologies, dial-up modems, private radio networks,
satellite communication, Internet, cellular network and so on.
Several studies on home automation have been done using
different types of control methods.
The work in [1] showed how home appliances could be
controlled by an integrated system. However, the proposed
system is based on a dedicated network and has never been
tested on the Internet. Moreover, the system only shows how
to solve home automation problems at the software level;
hardware aspects were not considered. Nunes and Delgado [2]
proposed an Internet application that allows local and remote
monitoring and control of a home. The application adopted an
object oriented approach to represent each home component
as an object that is connected to a server at home. The
research was carried out using a model for the application but
no real experiments were done. The paper does not discuss the
 hardware implementation and assumes that home
appliances have built-in controllers and are ready for Internet
access. The power and usefulness of Java in Internet
applications have been under thorough testing by several
researchers. The design and implantation of a portable, light-
weight user interface for a home automation system is
proposed in [3-4]. The emphasis was on the use of Java in
developing software user interfaces to provide remote access
to the home control system. Sriskanthan proposed an
automation system that can control home appliances from a
PC using Bluetooth [5]. However, the system cannot be
controlled remotely through the Internet. Wong introduced a
phone-based system for home and office automation using a
hardware-based remote controller for home appliances [6].
Communication takes place via a dedicated telephone line not
via the Internet. A similar system has been designed for
remote home automation using the telephone by Coskun and
Ardam [7].
The real time monitoring has been an important feature that
can be used in the home automation systems. As a change in
the status of the devices occurs, the user can be informed in
real time. In this paper, we present an attractive low-cost
solution for home automation via the Internet. Using Internet
access, home Owners can remotely monitor and control
almost any appliance at home. Local control is also offered in
our design. Appliances at home are connected to an embedded
system board (LM3S6965). The control code on the board
operates the appliances and communicates with the server.
The user can interact with the home automation system from
anywhere at any time. Furthermore, the system is flexible and
scalable. Additional home appliances can be integrated into
the system with little modification.
III HARDWARE LAYOUT DESIGN
Fig. 3 Hardware System Layout
As the above Fig.3 shows, the home appliances are
connected to the board (LM3S6965). The status of the
appliances will be monitored by the controller. The controller
2
sends all its status information to the server. Hence a remote
client can access the information about the home environment.
IV SYSTEM STRUCTURE
The system has a controller to process and control information.
The proposed system includes the following modules. Sensor
module, processor module, Ethernet interface module, web
server module. The below Fig.4 shows the outline structure of
the proposed system.
Sensor ARM Ethernet Embedded
Module Microcontroll Controlle
er
Web Server
LM3S6965 r
Fig. 4 Block diagram of the proposed system
A. Sensor Module
Sensors are used to sense the external environment. In this
proposed system, the sensors are used to sense the home
environment. Fire detection sensor senses and sends
information to the controller if it detects fire in home. Gas
leakage sensor gives information to the controller if it detects
any gas leakage. Temperature sensor is connected to water
heater and it sends the information to the controller about the
present temperature of the heater. Threshold value is set and if
the sensed temperature value exceeds the threshold, then the
controller switches off the water heater by itself.
B. LM3S6965
LM3S6965 belongs to ARM cortex family of processors.
Cortex M3 processors are low power processors that features
low gate count, low interrupt latency and low cost debug that
are intended for deeply embedded applications that require
fast interrupt response features. The processor implements the
ARM architecture v7-M. The architecture is optimized for
small footprint embedded applications. To reduce gate count
and enhance system flexibility, the cortex M3 has migrated
from the banked shadow register exception model of the ARM
7 to a stack based exception model.
This paper uses this LM3S6965 microcontroller for
monitoring and control of the home environment. Input is
given from the sensor module and based on the sensed
information, processing is carried on. Input is given to any of
the 4 ADC channels available in the LM3S6965 board.
C. ETHERNET CONTROLLER
An Ethernet controller is a small chip that handles all the data
that are exchanged between two computers via the Internet, a
LAN or WAN. They come in a variety of different pin
configurations including 48,100, 256, 276 and 883.
LM3S6965 has integrated Ethernet controller. In this proposed
system, LM3S6965 supports Ethernet interface and network
transformer HR961160C which is connected between
Microcontroller LM3S6965 and connector RJ45.HR961160C
is a 1:1 transformer with a smaller package and it supports
10M/100M Ethernet.
D. EMBEDDED WEBSERVER
Embedded web server refers to import Web Server at the
scene to monitor and control equipment, in the support of
appropriate hardware platforms and software systems, transfer
traditional monitor and control equipment into an internet
based, possessed with TCP/IP protocol as the underlying
communication protocol and Web server technology as its
core. The resources of embedded devices is limited, and do
not able to handle multiple user requests, so the specifically
designed embedded Web server are needed instead of Apache
used in Linux.
V IMPLEMENTATION OF DYNAMIC WEB PAGE
Webpage can be created using HTML. In order to implement
the web page, the terms used are as follows.
A. DHCP SERVER
Dynamic Host Configuration protocol (DHCP) is an auto
configuration protocol used on IP networks. Computers that
are connected to IP networks must be configured before they
can communicate with other computers on the network.
DHCP allows a computer to be configured automatically,
eliminating the need for intervention by a network
administrator. It also provides a central database for keeping
track of computers that have been connected to the network.
This prevents two computers from accidentally being
configured with the same IP address. In the absence of DHCP,
hosts may be manually configured with an IP address. In
addition to IP addresses, DHCP also provides other
configuration information, particularly the IP addresses of
local caching DNS resolvers. Hosts that do not use DHCP for
address configuration may still use it to obtain other
configuration information.
B. CGI
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard that
defines how web server software can delegate the generation
of web pages to a stand-alone application, an executable file.
Such applications are known as CGI scripts; they can be
written in any programming language, although scripting
languages are often used.
C. HTML
HTML, which stands for Hyper Text Mark-up Language, is
the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML is
the basic building-blocks of WebPages. HTML is written in
the form of HTML elements consisting of tags, enclosed
in angle brackets (like <html>), within the web page
content. The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML
documents and compose them into visual or audible web
pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses
the tags to interpret the content of the page. HTML elements
form the building blocks of all websites. HTML
allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to
3
create interactive forms. It provides a means to
create structured documents by denoting
structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists,
links, quotes and other items. It can embed scripts in
languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of
HTML WebPages.
E. DYNAMIC WEB PAGE
An IP address must be assigned for each and every devices
connected to a network. This is done through DHCP server or
by means of manual configuration. If the web server has the
setup of DHCP then ip address is assigned automatically else
manual configuration of IP address is done.
VI IMPLEMENTATION OF WEB TECHNOLOGY
Web technologies acts as the interface between web servers
and their clients. This information includes markup languages,
programming interfaces and languages, and standards for
document identification and display. Initially web pages
should be created by writing commands in html. Webpage can
be created as per the requirement. The system is developed in
such a way that the web page gets the update from the sensor
module once after 2 seconds. The following are the steps
involved in the implementation of web technology.
a) Users in the client browser make a request to the Web
server. The below Fig.6 shows the screenshot of the web
browser requesting for the web page that has the information
about the home environment.
Fig.6 Browser requesting for a webpage
b) Web server will make a judgement on the request. Web
server will transfer file directly to the client browser if the
request is a static file, else Web server will activate the CGI
program.
c) Daemon of Web server create a sub process which sets
environment variables that establishes two standard I/O data
channels between the server and the external CGI process
d) Web server startup the CGI program that URL specified.
CGI program read and process client's input data through
environment variables and standard input Stdin and calling the
appropriate external program in accordance with the request.
 seconds. Web pages in the server can be accessed only if the
IP address of the server is known. Browser requests the web
page through the http address.
The below Fig.7.2, shows the web page requested by the
browser. The web page in the Fig shows the current status of
the home environment. It shows the current date, time,
temperature in the home environment, any detection of fire at
home, any gas detection and the current status of the door i.e.,
it shows whether the door is closed or opened.

Fig.6.1 Webpage requested by the browser

e) CGI will pass the result through the standard output Stdout
to the server daemon after processing, and then daemon
transfer results back to the client browser in HTML format.
The above Fig.6.1 shows the web page that got displayed as a
result of the request given by the web browser through the http
address.
VII SYSTEM TESTING

The system is tested by enabling the connection between Fig.7.2 Real Time Status of the home environment
various modules as said in the previous discussion. The below
Home Environment icon in Fig.6.1, has a link that displays the
Fig7.1 shows the real set up of the system. Ethernet controller
screen (Fig.7.2) that has the output of various sensors. Thus
is inbuilt in LM3S6965.This controller has Ethernet
from this screen, the user can monitor the home environment.
transformer HR961160C that can be connected to RJ45 port of
Home control icon has a link that displays the page to control
a computer. Ethernet transformer minimises the loss of data
various home appliances. This control application is showed
transferred by the ethernet controller. Various sensors are
in the below Fig.7.3. The home appliance can be controlled
connected to the controller in order to monitor the home
through the web page.
environment. The setup as shown in the below Fig.7.1, will be
placed at home. LM3S6965 will maintain a web server.

Fig.7.3 Real Time Control Of the home appliance

Home details icon in the Fig.6.1, has a link to display the

Fig.7.1 Physical connection of the system
The monitored information is sent to the webpage
dynamically. The data in the server gets updated every 2
home details which include various appointments, medical
records and various information about the family members.
Any additional information required, can be added to this web
page.These details should be updated by the member of the
house manually. The below Fig.7.4 shows the home details
maintained in the server.

4
 [6] Wong, E.M.C, “Phone-based remote controller for home and office
automation”, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 40 No.1, pp.
28 –34, February 1994.

[7] Ismail Coskun and H. Ardam, “A Remote Controller for Home and
Office Appliances by Telephone,” IEEE Transactions on Consumer, Vol. 44,
No. 4, pp. 1291-1297. November 1998.

[8] Chengyi Cui,Xiangjun Jiang,”Study and Design of Embedded Web Server

based on ARM9”

[9] www.Texas Instruments.com.

[10] www.keil.com.

Fig.7.4 Screen shot of the web page showing home details

From anywhere in this world, the user can view any

information related to the home. In order to avoid unwanted
people to view the details, password can be set.

CONCLUSION
A web-based home automation system was designed,
implemented and tested. The system uses an off-the-self
Stand-alone embedded system board that can monitor and
control home appliances locally without the need for internet
conductivity. Once the user decides to use the remote
monitoring and control activities via the World Wide Web,
he/she can enable the remote access software engine to allow
remote access via the server’s parallel port to monitor and
control the appliances from any web bower. A software
algorithm was developed using high-level languages to
monitor and control the appliances locally or remotely. The
system is scalable and new devices can be added with no
changes to the core. The client interface is a simple home page
with friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI). The system
allows multi-vendor appliances to be added with no major
changes.
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