2012 1st International Conference on Emerging Technology Trends in Electronics, Communication and Networking

Wireless Smart Power Saving System For Home

Automation
Jalpa Shah,Lokesh Pathrabe,Brijesh Patel
Institute of technology,Nirma university,Ahmedabad,Gujarat,India
jalpa.shah@nirmauni.ac.in
lokesh_18690@yahoo.co.in
08bic034@nirmauni.ac.in

TABLE I
Abstract—Mostly in home and office appliances like light E NERGY C ONSUMPTION C OMPARISON
and fan are manually controlled which leads to power
wastage. They are left ON even if there is no usage and Scenario Without smart With smart Difference Cost
even when the appliances are in use their operation is control(kWh) control(kWh) (kWh) saving($)
not controlled by environmental conditions like daylight Living 4044.596 2780.448 1264.148 227.55
and temperature variation. By making a smart automated Room
controlling system for appliances we can save the power by Dining 183.553 123.841 59.712 10.75
huge amount. In this paper we are providing a solution for Area
preventing the wastage of power in a comfortable and cost Kitchen 2087.024 2061.820 25.204 4.54
effective way. Our system consists of an electronic door lock Bed 3366.062 2736.425 629.637 113.33
and power saving module. When the person enters the correct Room
password in door lock the power saving module is switched
on. The power saving module switches the appliances in the
room based on the presence of the person. It also controls the
power delivered to fan and light according to temperature of home automation system and Wi-Fi network integrated
room and natural daylight intensity. through a common home gateway have been developed
I. INTRODUCTION earlier [8]. A remote controlled home automation system
have been developed using bluetooth technology[3]. A
smart door lock home automation system [1] in which the
appliances of home can be controlled and monitored from
the door lock connected with Zigbee network. Most of the
systems developed earlier are dependent on the motion
sensing of the user in the room which can fail if users
movements are minimum (sitting or sleeping). Another
problem is the cost of wireless network. The use of Zigbee
and other protocol devices increases the cost of the system.
The system we propose is free from these problems.
Instead of just sensing the motion, the system also counts
the number of persons in the room and decides the
room occupancy status to prevent any errors. Instead
of just ON-OFF switching, it also monitors their
Fig. 1. Power consumption comparison intensity through a power control drive according to
the daylight availability and temperature of the room.
Work in home automation system is still under For creating a wireless network we have used low cost
development phase and we have not come across any RF modules that are easy to use and easily available.
effective and low cost home automation system. As the
Fig. 1 shows the amount of power that can be saved by The user can enter the house by entering the correct
smart control. The comparison of power consumption password in the digital door lock. It unlocks the door and
at home with and without a smart control system are enables the power saving module by turning the power
shown in Table I[2] . With smart control the total power supply ON. Thus when the user is not present in the
consumed can be reduced by about 18%. A ZigBee based house the power saving module is switched OFF and turns

978-1-4673-1627-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

 2012 1st International Conference on Emerging Technology Trends in Electronics, Communication and Networking
Fig. 2. Block diagram of system
ON only when a correct password is provided. Once the
power saving module is active the two transmitters send
their respective sensor readings to the main receiver. One
circuit has temperature sensor LM 35 and light sensor
OPT101 and a RF transmitter we call it Node2. These
sensors are used to decide the environmental conditions
and requirement of the user. The other circuit has a pair of
PIR sensors and RF transmitter we call it Node1. Node1
decides whether the room is occupied or not. The readings
from both the nodes are transmitted to the Base station
which contains RF receiver and power control circuit.
The reading from the two nodes is used to calculate the
firing angle. By changing the firing angle we can not only
switch the appliances ON and OFF but can also vary the
power delivered to them. So if the temperature is low the
power delivered to the fan will be lowered, similarly if the
natural light intensity is low i.e. during evening the power
delivered to the light will be increased.
II. H ARDWARE A RCHITECTURE
A. Wireless RF module
Fig. 3. 433MHz RF Transceiver module
These RF modules[7] are easily available implemented
at low cost compared to Zigbee based devices. Transmit-
ter and receiver modules are tuned to work correctly at
433.92MHz. Transmitter can be powered from 3 to 12V
978-1-4673-1627-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
power supply while receiver accepts 5V. 5V is common
for AVR microcontrollers so no problems with interfacing.
Modules do not require addition components just apply
power and connect single data line to send information
to or from. For better distance we can put 30 35cm
antennas. Modules use Amplitude-Shift Keying (ASK)
modulation method and uses 1MHz bandwidth. The data
is serial send and received through these modules from
microcontrollers. This makes the system cost effective.
The range as tested in free space is:
At 7000bps, Range about 90m
At 5000bps, Range about 100m
At 2000bps, Range over 150m
At 1000bps, Range over 150m
For sending data through these transmitters and receivers
Virtual Wire library[9] for Arduino IDE is used. The
details about the data packet is given below. Each message
is transmitted as:
• 36 bit training preamble consisting of 0-1 bit pairs
• 12 bit start symbol 0xb38
• 1 byte of message length byte count (4 to 30), count
includes byte count and Frame check sequence (FCS)
bytes
• n message bytes
• 2 bytes FCS, sent low byte-hi byte
B. Electronic door lock
The door lock uses a 4 digit password to open. The 4
digit password entered by user is stored in the EEPROM
of the microcontroller. Atmega 328 provides 1KB of
EEPROM. The 4x4 keyboard and 16X2 LCD display is
used to enter the password, when the password is correct
the door lock can be unlocked by rotating a servo motor
connected to a rack and pinion structure.
C. Occupation sensor node
Fig. 4. Passive Infrared Sensor(PIR)
A Passive Infrared (PIR) is a sensor detects the presence
of a nearby objects without any physical contact. PIR
sensors are used as proximity sensor. A proximity sensor
generally emits an electromagnetic or electrostatic field, or
 2012 1st International Conference on Emerging Technology Trends in Electronics, Communication and Networking

a beam of electromagnetic radiation and looks for changes at any moment and whether the room is empty or occupied.
in the field or return signal. The object being sensed is Accordingly we can switch on or off the lights and fan.
often referred to as the proximity sensor’s target.
D. Temperature and light sensor node

Fig. 5. PIR range

The maximum distance that this sensor can detect is

defined nominal range which in this case is up to 3-4 m.
The sensor has three terminals. Vcc, GND and OUT the
output is analogue. When the sensor detects any motion it
provides +5V output otherwise 0V.
Fig. 7. Sensor node

Fig. 7 shows the circuit of sensor node and its

components. This node transfers the temperature and
light intensity information to the receiver through the
433MHz transmitter. The light sensor used is OPT 101
it provides analogue output proportional to the light
intensity which is converted to digital by analogue to
digital converter (ADC) available in the microcontroller.
Similarly temperature sensor LM 35 also gives analogue
output that is converted to digital by ADC. The measured
analogue value is compared to some preset value in
Fig. 6. PIR occupation sensor
software. After analysing the sensor readings signal is
sent to the receiver for changing the power delivered to
The sensor usually used for sensing motion has the load.
been used here for detecting the direction of mo-
tion. By using two PIR sensors suitably and inter-
rupt programming in microcontroller the number of per- E. Base station
sons entering and leaving the room can be counted.
Fig. 6 shows how the two PIR sensors are placed at a
distance of few centimetres. The PIR sensor encountered
first is shown by bigger size and the sensor encountered
later is shown by smaller size. Phase difference between
the readings of the two sensors can be used to detect
the directions of the movement. The microcontroller is
continuously reading the sensor pair. User while moving
in or out of the room will pass through these sensors
one by one. Both the sensor will give HIGH signal to
the microcontroller. If PIR1 sensor, as shown in the Fig.
6 gives +5V before the PIR2 sensor then the person is
moving IN the room. If PIR2 sensor gives +5V before the
PIR1 sensor then the person is moving OUT of the room. Fig. 8. Base station
Whenever a person is detected entering or leaving the room
the count is incremented or decremented respectively. Thus Fig. 8 shows the circuit of base station. The sensor
we can know number of persons available inside the room reading from the two sensor nodes is received by the

978-1-4673-1627-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

 2012 1st International Conference on Emerging Technology Trends in Electronics, Communication and Networking

receiver. The microcontroller compares the received sensor A. Electronic door lock
data to a preset values to decide the amount of power
to be delivered. The AC control circuit obtains signal
from the microcontroller for changing the firing angle
start
delay of the triac circuit. Fig. 9 shows the block diagram

Read
Password
from
Keypad

Read Display
password ”Incorrect
from password”
EEPROM

Compare Incorrect password

Fig. 9. Power control circuit Password

of AC control circuit. The zero-crossing detector(ZCD) correct password

gives high pulse whenever the AC supply signal crosses
the x-axis. The ZCD circuit consists of 4N35 and 12V Read
transformer. The signal from the ZCD is used to interrupt keypad
the microcontroller. After getting interrupted it waits for commands
a period of firing angle. After a delay of firing angle(α)
the microcontroller triggers the triac through opto-coupler
MOC3010.
Execute the
commands

end

Fig. 10. Change in AC supply

Fig. 11. Electronic Door lock algorithm

The Fig. 10 shows how the power is changed by chang-
ing the firing angle of the triac through a microcontroller.
The shaded region of the waveform is delivered to the
load and unshaded region is blocked by the triac. Thus the
power can be varied from zero to maximum value.
III. SOFTWARE A RCHITECTURE
This section contains software details of all the modules
in the system.
Above flow chart shows the algorithm of door lock. The
password is entered in a 4x4 keyboard. The entered pass-
word is compared with the password saved in EEPROM.
If password matches the door lock is opened by rotating
the servo motor, which is fixed with a rack and pinion
structure that locks the door. The password can be changed
after entering the correct current password so only the
authorised user can change the password. Once the door
lock is unlocked it enables the power saving module.

978-1-4673-1627-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

 2012 1st International Conference on Emerging Technology Trends in Electronics, Communication and Networking

B. Occupancy sensor node controller. Depending upon the sequence of the interrupt
the system determines the direction of motion. When the
start person enters the room the count of number of persons is
increased and when moves outside, count is decremented.
When the count is greater than zero the node sends the
receiver signal to switch ON the appliances and when the
Wait for count is zero signal is sent to switch OFF the appliances.
interrupt The data is send at a delay of one second.

C. Temperature and Light Sensor node

Interrupt Interrupt
from PIR1 from PIR2 Read sensor
start
value

Wait for Wait for

signal signal Compare it
from PIR2 from PIR1 with present
values

One person One person

entering in left the Decide the
the room room mode of
(increment) (decrement) operation

calculate Buffer
number of
person in
the room

send for wait for

1 sec 1 sec
store
number
in buffer
Fig. 13. Temperature and light sensor node algorithm

send it wait for

to master 1 sec
Fig. 12. Occupancy sensor node algorithm
The occupational sensor node contains two PIR sensors
placed at distance of few centimetres. The signal from PIR
sensor interrupts the microcontroller. PIR1 is connected
with INT0 and PIR2 is connected with INT1 of micro-
Above flow chart shows the algorithm for the sensor
node which sends light and temperature values to the
receiver. Instead of sending the sensor readings the values
have been divided in several ranges of light intensity and
temperature for example 30-35, 35-40 centigrade. This
range is sent to the base station instead of readings, this
reduces the amount of data to be sent through wireless
network. The microcontroller sends data after every one
second. The base station changes the intensity of the power
delivered to the load according to the range of sensor
readings.

978-1-4673-1627-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

 2012 1st International Conference on Emerging Technology Trends in Electronics, Communication and Networking

D. Base station node power based on daylight requirement power can be without
causing any inconvenience to the user.
start start
IV. C ONCLUSION
The study shows that a lot of power is wasted in home
Read and offices due to inefficient usage of appliances. The
data from transmission of power from power station to the user adds
Receiver to the loss up to 50 percentage. One unit saved at the
consumer level saves two units of power at the power
station. Thus the importance of power saving and need of a
read sensor Zero smart system increases. Such a smart power saving system
data and crossing is suggested in the paper that can save power and increase
decide detector comfort level of the user with minimum expenditure.
firing angle interrupt The components used in the system like microcontroller,
sensors and wireless transceivers are readily available
and cheap. With increase in awareness among the users
regarding power saving the need for such smart systems
calculating Firing will go up. In future we will see some more sophisticated
firing angle angle delay embedded systems monitoring our power requirements and
usage.
R EFERENCES
Trigger [1] Yong Tae Park, Pranesh Sthapit and Jae-Young Pyun, ”Smart Digital
triac Door Lock for the Home Automation” TENCON 2009 978-1-4244-
4547-9/09/26.00 2009 IEEE.
[2] Dhiren Tejani, Ali Mohammed A. H. Al-Kuwari and Vidyasagar
Potdar ”Energy Conservation in a Smart Home” 5th IEEE
International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies
Return to start Return to start (IEEE DEST 2011), 31 May -3 June 2011, Daejeon, Korea.
[3] Kwang Yeol Lee, Jae Weon Choi ”Remote-Controlled Home Au-
tomation System via Bluetooth Home Network” 5th SICE Annual
Conference in Fukui, August 4-6,2003 Fukui University, Japan
[4] ”Arduino development board” www.arduino.cc
Fig. 14. Base station algorithm [5] ”voltage controlled AC light dimmer” http://pcbheaven.com/
circuitpages/Voltage Controlled AC Light Dimmer/
[6] Lewis Loflin ”Hardware interrupt on Arduino to control AC” http:
Above flow chart shows the algorithm of main receiver //www.bristolwatch.com/arduino/arduino power control.html.
program. The main function of the program receives data [7] ”433MHz RF module with AVR microcontroller”
http://winavr.scienceprog.com/example-avr-projects/
from both the nodes. The two sensor modes are sending running-tx433-and-rx433-rf-modules-with-avr-microcontrollers.
data after every 1 second of delay thus both access same html
channel to send their readings. After receiving sensor [8] Khusvinder Gill, Shuang-Hua Yang, Fang Yao, and Xin Lu”A
ZigBee-Based Home Automation System” IEEE Transactions on
readings microcontroller compare them with preset values Consumer Electronics, Vol. 55, No. 2, MAY 2009
to determine the amount of power to be delivered to [9] Mike McCauley”Virtual Wire library for Arduino” http://www.
load. The power can be caried by changing firing angle open.com.au/mikem/arduino/VirtualWire.pdf
of the triac in AC drive circuit. TO change the firing
angle first the zero-crossing detector (ZCD) interrupts
the microcontroller whenever the supply AC crosses x-
axis. After getting interrupted microcontroller waits for a
particular time period corresponding to the current firing
angle and then triggers the triac. Before the trigger pulse
the triac blocks the AC supply from reaching to the load,
once triggered it acts as a closed switched and allows
supply to reach the load.
W aittime = (α/360) ∗ (1/50)sec.
By changing the firing angle from 0-360 degree the power
can be controlled from zero to maximum. By changing

978-1-4673-1627-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE