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Smart home automation system using Bluetooth technology

Conference Paper · May 2017

DOI: 10.1109/ICIEECT.2017.7916544

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 Smart Home Automation System Using
Bluetooth Technology
Muhammad Asadullah, IEEE Student Member, Khalil Ullah, IEEE Member
Department of Electrical Engineering
National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences
Peshawar, Pakistan
PI36384@nu.edu.pk, Khalil.ullah@nu.edu.pk
Abstract-In this paper a low cost and user friendly remote
controlled home automation system is presented using Arduino
board, Bluetooth module, smartphone, ultrasonic sensor and
moisture sensor. A smartphone application is used in the suggested
system which allows the users to control up to 18 devices including
home appliances and sensors using Bluetooth technology.
Nowadays, most of conventional home automation systems are
designed for special purposes while proposed system is a general
purpose home automation system. Which can easily be implement
in existing home. The suggested system has more features than
conventional home automation systems such as an ultrasonic
sensor is used for water level detection and soil moisture sensor is
use for automatic plant irrigation system. This paper also
describes the hardware and software architecture of system,
future work and scope. The proposed prototype of home
automation system is implemented and tested on hardware and it
gave the exact and expected results.
Keywords-Home automation; Smartphone; Arduino;
Bluetooth; Home appliances
I. INTRODUCTION
Home automation system is use of information technologies
and control system to reduce the human labor. The rapid growth
of technologies influence us to use smartphones to remotely
control the home appliances. An automated devices has ability
to work with versatility, diligence and with lowest error rate [1].
The idea of home automation system is a significant issue for
researchers and home appliances companies. Automation
system not only helps to decrease the human labor but it also
saves time and energy [2-3]. Early home automation systems
were used in labor saving machines but nowadays its main
objective is provide facilities to elderly and handicapped people
to perform their daily routine tasks and control the home
appliances remotely. The Allied Business Intelligence (ABI)
research [4] reports that almost l.5 million automatic home
appliances were installed in United States of America (USA)
during 2012 and their increasing rate is 45.2%. In wireless
based home automation system different type of technologies
such as ZigBee [5], Z-Wave [6], Global System for Mobile
(GSM) [7], General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) [8], Infrared
[9], wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) [10-11] and Bluetooth [12] are
used, each technology has their own pros and cons. ABluetooth
based wireless home automation system can be implement with
a low cost and it is easy to install in an existing home [13]. A
research work proved that Bluetooth system are faster than
978-1-5090-3310-2/ 17/$3\.00 ©2017 IEEE
wireless and GSM systems. Bluetooth technology has ability
to transmit data serially up to 3 Mbps within a physical range
of 10m to 100m depending on the type of Bluetooth device.
The proposed method presents the design and
implementation of a robust, low cost and user friendly home
automation system using Bluetooth technology. The design of
proposed method is based on Arduino board, Bluetooth module,
sensors and smartphone application. Bluetooth module HC-06
is interfaced with Arduino board and home appliances are
connected with Arduino board via relay. Smartphone
application is used for serial communication between
smartphone and Bluetooth module which is further connected
with Arduino board. Proposed method has ability to not only
remotely control the appliances but it also monitors the sensors.
Nowadays most of conventional home automation systems are
designed for elderly, handicapped people or for any special
purpose. The proposed method is not only suitable for elderly
and handicapped people but it also provides a general purpose
home automation system, which can easily implement in
existing home. An ultrasonic sensor is used for water level
detection and soil moisture sensor is used for automatic
irrigation system to provide more ease and facilities to users.
In next section related work is discussed. In section III,
overall system description is presented. Section IV describes
the hardware architecture and section V describes the software
architecture of proposed work. Result and analysis are
highlighted in section VI. Finally section VII, described the
conclusion and future work.
II. RELATED WORK
Several remote controlled home automation systems have
been studied. R.Piyare and M.Tazil research work [14]
provided full functionality to remotely control home appliances
via wireless communication between the Arduino BT and cell
phone using Bluetooth technology. Arduino BT board was
connected with home appliance and it was controlled by a
Symbian OS cell phone application. Symbian OS cell phone
can only support the python language scripts and this system
failed to support Java based application, nowadays mostly
smartphone applications are developed in Java. Similarly,
another study presented home automation system using
Bluetooth and android application. However, this was designed
only for 4 lights and it was not feasible to control more than 4
home appliances [15]. In another research work [16], XBee Sensors
based home automation system introduced for handicapped and
elderly people. XBee transceivers was used for wireless _. _. _. _. _. _.i::_._._._. _. _._,
communication between the master control panel board and the
remote control device.
A home monitoring and automation system was also studied, i Soil moisture ultrasonic

it was implemented by using Arduino Uno and Digilent

--
chipKIT. Although this system mentioned as low cost system

--
but it is much expensive than Bluetooth base home automation
system [17]. A low cost and wireless controlled automation
system was designed by researchers [18]. Bluetooth technology
was used to provide remote controlled wireless access to user. User Smartphone Bluetooth Arduino
Although this system achieved high accuracy but it only aimed

I .--
module
to provide facilities and assistance to disabled and elderly.
Home
In [19], a petrol level indicator was designed and appliances
,r-.-.-.---------.
. I
implemented on hardware using two ultrasonic sensors (HC I
SR-04), liquid crystal display (LCD), micro SD card and Atmel Wireless connection
ARV controller. The system has ability to measure the petrol ---- ~ I
I
level 0.03-3 meters inside the fuel tank. Moreover system i Electric fan Television Air conditioner I
I
indicate the users if the petrol level drop below the fixed level. ~.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.j
In [20], an overview of different home automation systems Fig. 1. Block diagram of proposed system
in presents. Authors highlight the advantages and disadvantages
of different technologies such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, GSM and
EnOcean. The Bluetooth based automation system are low cost
and enables the user to control appliances within the range of
Bluetooth network.

III. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION .

The proposed system has two main parts hardware and

software. The hardware part consists of three main hardware
components smartphone, Arduino board and Bluetooth module. Establish Bluetooth Connection
Software part consist of Arduino integrated development
environment (IDE) and Bluetooth terminal smartphone
application which is used for wireless communication between
Send command from smartphone
smartphone and Arduino board. Ultrasonic and soil moisture
sensor are also used in this method to provide more ease and
facilities to the users. Fig. 1 illustrates block diagram of
proposed home automation system and the flow chart is
depicted in Fig. 2.
No
IV. H ARDWARE ARCHITECTURE

The proposed home automation system contains three

hardware components smartphone, Arduino board and
Bluetooth module. Smartphone is used to communicate with
Arduino board using a smartphone application and Bluetooth If If
technology. In this research work Bluetooth module HC 06 and Monitor Control
Arduino Uno are used for hardware implementation.
Check status of Control home
I------il------i
sensors appliances
A. Arduino Uno
Arduino Uno is open source hardware and microcontroller
board which is based on ATmega328P Processor. It has 14 Send current status on smartphone
digital input/output and 6 analog input pins and operates at 5
volts and 16 MHz quartz crystal frequency. It has 32 KB flash
Fig. 2. Flow chart of proposed home automation system
memory, 2 Kb SRAM and 1 KB EEPROM.
B. Bluetooth module HC-06 technology. First time, a floating plate is used to increase the
Bluetooth module HC-06 is used for wireless communication accuracy of water level detection and it achieved better results
between Arduino Uno and smartphone. HC-06 is a slave device than conventional water level indicator. A dead band is also
and it can operates at power 3.6 to 6 volts. It has 6 pins: State, introduced to automatically switch off the water pump when
RXD, TXD, GND, VCC and EN. For serial communication tank get filled.
connect TXD pin of Bluetooth module HC-06 with RX (pin 0)
Table 1 Specification and limitation of HC-SR04
of Arduino Uno and RXD pin with TX (pin 1) of Arduino Uno.
Connection diagram of Adriano and Bluetooth (BT) module is Parameter Min Typ. Max Unit
illustrated in Fig. 3. Operating Voltage 4.50 5.0 5.5 V
HC1 Quiescent Current 1.5 2 2.5 rnA
BLUETOOTH He-06
Working Current 10 15 20 rnA

SIM1
Ultrasonic Frequency - 40 - kHz
DDDDDD
:t>:t>:t>i(;:t>:t> G)01 :til Effectual Angle 0 15 - Degree

rb::~£:::~:1
Ranging Distance 2 400 cm
Trigger Input Pulse - 10 - uS
width

j;;o -I iooWMd) 1'!fllDlO

xx
0 '" f'.) ,
W.j:>. "
(J1 CTI-...J
D. Soil moisture sensor
DDDDDDDD
Soil moisture sensor is used to measure the water content
inside the soil. Practically they are used in application such as
research, agriculture and landscape irrigation system. Soil
moisture sensor has three pins GND, VCC and analog (AO). To
interface it with Arduino board, GND pin should be connected
Fig. 3. Connection diagram of Arduino and BT module
with ground, VCC with 5 volts and analog (AO) with analog
input pin of Arduino board. In proposed method soil moisture
C. Ultrasonic Range Sensor HC-SR04 sensor is used for automatic plants irrigation system and it also
transmit the measurement report of water content to
The ultrasonic sensor HC-SR04 has a transmitter and smartphone, user will be able to monitor the value of water
receiver. It uses sonar to calculate the distance from a physical content from his smartphone application and further he will be
objects. It has an excellent range of object detection from 2 cm able to turn ON and OFF water supply for irrigation purpose.
to 400 cm (13 feet) with high accuracy. The ultrasonic sensors
calculate the physical object' s distance by transmitting
ultrasonic wave and then detects its reflection wave. The V. SOFTWARE ARCHlTECTURE
working principle of ultrasonic sensor is demonstrated in Fig.
In this research work two software Arduino Integrated
4.
Development Environment (IDE) and Bluetooth terminal
application are used.

~))~~~..
Echo
A. Arduino IDE
IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment, entire
programming for proposed system is done in Arduino IDE tool.
Start Pulse
JL~ Baud rate is set to 9600 bits per second for serial
CJE[). ~~========~--~ communication between Arduino board and smartphone.
~ L
Echo Time Pulse Arduino IDE command "Serial. Available 0" is used to receive
data serially from smartphone and "Serial.printlnO" command
Fig. 4.Working principle of ultrasonic sensor is used to transmit data serially from Arduino board to
Ping is input ultrasonic waves which are transmitted at the smartphone. The code to receive data serial from smartphone is
velocity of340 mls and Echo is reflected output of sensor which shown below.
is used to determine the distance. The ultrasonic sensor HC-
SR04 parameter specification with their limitations are given in
Table 1. int state;
In proposed work ultrasonic sensor is used for the if(Serial.availableO > 0) % checking for serial input
measurement of water level inside the water tank. It measure
the distance of water level from the top of water tank and gives
its report on smartphone application using Bluetooth
 State variable is used to store the value of received byte and
then it is compared with different condition and perform the
specific operation. The Arduino IDE code for turn ON and OFF
Light is shown below.
if (state == '0') %condition check
{ the schematic of proposed home automation system with 5V-
Serial.println("LIGHT ON");
digitaIWrite(LIGHT, HIGH); %Turn On the Light
were connected with Arduino Uno RX and TX pins
respectively, while ultrasonic sensor Echo and Trigger pins
were connected with Arduino Uno pin 6 and 7 respectively and
their VCC pins were connected with 5V DC supply. The home
appliances lamp, electric motor and fan were connected with
Arduino Uno digital output ports with the help ofrelays. Relays
were used for 5V to 240V switching circuitry. Fig. 5illustrates
240V switching circuitry.

if (state == '1 ') %condition check

{
Serial.println("LIGHT OFF");
digitaIWrite(LIGHT, LOW); %Turn OFF the Light

Similarly state variable is compared with different conditions

to control more appliances.

B. Bluetooth terminal application

A smartphone application named Bluetooth (BT) Simple
terminal [21] is used for wireless communication between
smartphones and Arduino board. It has ability to transmit
ASCII data serially from smartphone to Arduino board using
Bluetooth module. ASCII data and their equated operation are Fig. 5 Schematic of proposed system with 5V -240V switching circuitry
given in Table 2. According to proposed method users will be Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 demonstrates the input and output voltage
able to control maximum 18 appliances and sensors using wavefonn of switching circuitry. Fig. 6 illustrates the input and
Bluetooth terminal application. output voltage waveform of relays, the output of relay is OV
when its input voltage is low (OV). Similarly relay enables
Table 2. ASCII data with its equated operations
240V supply to home appliances when its input voltage is high
ASCII Operation (5V) as shown in Fig. 7.
Data
0 Turn ON light 1
1 Turn OFF light 1
2 Turn ON light 2
3 Turn OFF light 2
4 Turn ON FAN
5 Turn OFF FAN
6 Turn ON air Conditioner
7 Turn OFF air Conditioner
8 Turn ON television
9 Turn OFF television
S Check status of all appliances & sensors
W Check status of water level indicator
M Check status of soil moisture sensor
Fig. 6 Voltage waveform of 5V -240V switching circuitry (input low)

VI. RESULTS Bluetooth Terminal application was installed in smartphone

Proposed home automation system implemented on
hardware using Arduino Uno, ultrasonic sensor HC-SR04, soil
moisture sensor, Bluetooth module HC-06 and smartphone.
Soil moisture sensor pin (AO) is connected with Arduino Uno
analog input pin AO, Bluetooth module TXD and RXD pins
and a Bluetooth wireless connection was established between
smartphone and Arduino Uno. Password protection was used
for pairing of smartphone with Bluetooth Module HC-06 to
only allow authorized user. Fig. 8 illustrates the user interface
of Bluetooth Terminal application.

Clear terminal window
Fig. 8 User interface Bluetooth Terminal application
The suggested home automation system was tested within the
range of 20 meters and it attained 100% accuracy. All the
connected LEDs were controlled from the smartphone
application and the measurement report of water level indicator
and soil moisture was also received on smartphone.
VII. CONCLUSION
In this research work a low cost and user friendly design for
home automation system is presented. It has better performance
than existing Bluetooth based conventional home automation
systems, it provides a general approach for home automation
which is not only suitable for elderly and handicapped people
but it is also beneficial to reduce human labor and save energy
with the help of sensors. For the knowledge of readers, this is
the first paper on home automation system in which ultrasonic
sensor and floating plate are used for water level detection. In
addition proposed system has ability to transmit the
measurement report of sensors on user smartphone application.
Moreover smartphone application used in proposed system has
ability to interface up to 18 home appliances and sensors.
Proposed system is analyzed and tested within the range of 20
meters and it achieved 100% accuracy.
Proposed system is only able to control the appliances within
short range, for future research work it is recommended to
increase the range and interface more sensors and it should be
a low cost and user friendly system. Moreover home
automation system can be interfaced with biomedical (EMG)
signals. It will be beneficial for amputees, they will be able to
control the appliances using their muscle's movement.
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