September 17, 2017 at 22:07Smart home and office automation
Smart Home, in the view of many, is a single "organism" with its residents, ensuring their safety, comfort and various amenities for life. Moreover, the individual components of such a house are “invisible” to the users themselves. Roughly, just as you don’t notice the modern operating system of your smartphone and call up the application you need, a smart home should provide its owners with optimal conditions for spending time with their families, meeting friends or solving everyday problems. Such a house should create the most comfortable conditions for rest or work, without being distracted by household trifles and, at the same time, saving energy consumption.
Obviously, the question arises of how to build such an ideal house or make your apartment “intellectual”? In fact, the answer is not entirely obvious.
For a modern smart building (Smart Building), for example, a business center or office space, the solution to this problem is quite prosaic. A project of such a structure will already include all components and systems of industrial automation. The presence of a centralized control center for all components of the building, its ecosystem and communication with external services will be taken into account. From the point of view of management and monitoring, such a project will use industrial automation systems, automated process control systems (SCADA / HMI systems) and cloud solutions (Cloud Computing) of large vendors.
For the equipment of a digital building system, integrators may well implement specialized software components that will link together the structural components of the building. Technologies such as Microsoft Azure IoT Suite can be used to solve these problems. At the lower level, in such industrial automation systems, specialized actuators and sensors will work. These systems use standardized industrial protocols for communication with controllers and subsequent transmission of information to the cloud to visualize the processes that occur in the task, archive the data history and execute algorithms that specify the parameters of the end devices.
Currently, there are many industrial communication protocols, for example, Modbus, RS-485, Industrial Ethernet, CAN and others, which are supported by the respective controllers. Moreover, due to the de facto standardization, in the field of industrial automation you can always find a communication interface converter from one network to another. Thus, you can combine the entire network of automation devices at the solution level, for example, Industrial Ethernet. The main thing for such unified systems is the availability of the OPC driver (Open Platform Communications), which will allow the selected SCADA / HMI system to interact with installed industrial controllers.
A smart building can well be controlled by several SCADA / HMI systems, and not connected to each other. For example, systems: central air conditioning, alarm, elevator control and many other systems may well exist independently. At the same time, such building-level solutions can also use public Internet channels to access cloud services and, on their basis, can turn from a conventional industrial automation network into an intelligent system of a smart building. Moreover, many sensors and actuators, having an additional channel for accessing the Internet, also become part of the cloud. In fact, this is the concept of the Internet of things, when many devices and systems can interact with the cloud, establishing links between them on its basis.
But who will take responsibility in case of lack of access to the Internet? In fact, industrial automation systems are designed in such a way that in the event of a disconnection or other breakdowns, an emergency protocol must always be executed. For example, without communication with the "outside world", the actuator must go into a pre-planned and pre-programmed mode, even in the event of a power outage in people's livelihood systems, a set of measures should always be provided in response to such a malfunction.
In turn, a cloud solution, using the example of Microsoft Azure, can be a whole complex consisting of components that interact with each other based on the open programming interface API (Application Programming Interface). So information from sensors and smart home systems can be sent to the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub service. This cloud service allows you to both receive and transmit control commands to executive devices.
In the case of a periodic lack of Internet connection, using the Azure IoT Edge service, you can transfer some of the intellectual properties of the cloud to end devices that can execute program code autonomously and when resuming communication, synchronize their data and algorithms for working with the cloud.
In the Microsoft Azure cloud itself, in addition to using storage services, the information flow from the IoT Hub can be processed using simple Azure Stream Analytics scripts, which are written in a language similar to the standard SQL query language. In this case, the analysis of the data stream is performed in real time. The fact is that Microsoft promises very low latency for Stream Analytics services.
Logged data can be transferred to the Event Hubs service, which is designed to work with telemetry. Here, the data will be streamlined and, for example, transmitted using the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) to other data processing services. The Microsoft Azure Cloud for Internet of Things systems supports the standard Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) messaging protocols and the programming of its devices and tasks in universal languages: Java, JavaScript, C, C # and Python.
You can use the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub in conjunction with the Power BI business intelligence service to visualize the data. Also, the data that enters the cloud can be processed using machine learning algorithms, where a user in the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio environment is required to build a data processing algorithm.
For example, a project can use artificial neural network technologies, regression analysis, and other similar solutions. The developer is only required to place the desired block on the diagram. If something does not work, you can always replace the previously selected block with another one. Thus, truly intelligent algorithms and components are being introduced into the building design.
But this is not all the features of Microsoft Azure, if the developed solution is interesting and replicable, then it can be published in the Azure Marketplace and provided to other users of this cloud as a ready-made service.
Not only Microsoft provides cloud computing for the Internet of things. You should also pay attention to Amazon's AWS IoT Platform, IBM's Watson IoT cognitive tools, and solutions from other vendors. But this is another story about the choice of the architecture of the project, the protocols used and the interaction of smart devices of a smart building.
It should be understood that the scale of the decisions under consideration is enormous, however, as are their capabilities for the entire ecosystem of a smart building. Of course, such a project will be much more expensive if it is considered in relation to a private house or apartment. But for a commercial building or a separate innovative construction, these costs are justified, especially since the synergistic effect of the introduction of such a system will exceed the investment. But what should an ordinary person do, who already wants to get a flexible and intelligent infrastructure for his home and his needs?
By comparing the tasks that are set for the systems of a smart building and a smart home, we can conclude that for the home, the tasks of the systems will still be more complicated, and the functionality will be more expanded. Perhaps this lies in the fact that up to now, a smart home is rather some unattainable or, more correctly, a difficultly realized goal, and we see only its rare manifestations. All the reasons for this, if you look, lie in the tasks and goals of such a house, as well as its price.
Compared with a commercial building or premises, where before the start of operation it is possible to conduct a safety briefing and the features of automated and automatic building systems, it will be much more difficult to do this for a smart home. Typically, consumers do not like to understand the details and learn to use and apply their smart electronics intuitively. From the point of view of consumers, as it should be, this approach is natural, but it is worth noting that only very recently began to appear systems that are safe for others and at the same time have a convenient and intuitive interface. Moreover, children, pets, and unsuspecting guests and so on may well become residents of a smart home, or rather its rooms.
On the other hand, another factor that hinders the rapid development of the components of a smart home should be noted - this is the relatively high price of its components. For example, the basis of a smart home is a lot of different electrical and electromechanical systems, information communications, intelligent sensors and actuators, and we should not forget about the data center or the “cybernetic brain” of a smart home. Of course, the price of such components should be available to many groups of different consumers.
Modern electronics is developing rapidly, which leads in general to the cost reduction of a smart home. Literally in a few years, for example, generations of bulbs have changed: from a conventional incandescent lamp controlled by a dimmer, fluorescent housekeepers to LED lamps and, finally, the appearance of smart bulbs. Such a smart lamp, for example, Philips Hue, Xiaomi LED Ceiling Light, or any simpler one, is an LED lamp with an ordinary base or a whole lighting device, but in this device there is a controller that controls the lighting: brightness and / or color scheme, depending on the model. But the main thing is that the device is equipped with a built-in controller, which can be connected via standard communication channels: Wi-Fi (802.11), Bluetooth, and control the lamp from your smartphone.
Using the simplest example of smart lamps, it becomes clear that designing a smart home is a very difficult task. Everything rests on standards and compatibility. If everything is more or less clear with the standards, because they are well documented, then it would seem that the compatibility of devices over data transmission channels can simply be ensured by a gateway. It allows you to “forward” data packets from one physical network to another, for example, from the same ZigBee network or from the popular specialized Z-Wave control command transmission network, designed specifically for solving smart home tasks, to a home local area network, for example, built on Based on wired Ethernet technology and a Wi-Fi wireless router. But at the same time, the main compatibility problem, in fact, is hidden in the content of the data packets themselves.
If physical communication networks are well documented and standardized, then the internal protocols of the same smart lamps or other devices are de facto implemented and documented within the manufacturing company or even isolated at the level of its one device line. But not everything is so bad for the end user. Recently, one can observe a remarkable tendency to open internal device data exchange protocols in the form of software APIs. Based on such open systems, it is already possible to integrate devices from different suppliers into a single smart home infrastructure. Ultimately, all you need to do is download the appropriate application for your smartphone.
Actually, the smartphone is becoming a single information and communication center of a smart home. Some manufacturers, for example, Xiaomi in the Redmi line, often integrate an infrared transmitter into a smartphone. This allows, by downloading a specialized program, to connect to old equipment that is controlled by a remote control with an infrared signal. After that, a regular TV, music center or air conditioning can receive commands from a smartphone, the main thing is the presence of a transmitter in the phone and support for the equipment model in the selected program from the Google Play Store or a similar solution to the Apple ecosystem.
On the other hand, a smartphone can control and interact with modern components of a smart home that are adapted to work with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and, of course, those that have direct Internet access. A smartphone may well become a kind of sensor. For example, based on determining the location of the owner of the smartphone, the Nest smart thermostat can understand whether the owner is inside the house or already far beyond it and, accordingly, adjusts the optimal heating mode to the situation. At the same time, the smartphone does not become indispensable when interacting with intelligent systems. You can always go to the Nest device and change its operation parameters. It should be noted that these thermostats can interact with compatible devices from other manufacturers,
It may also be quite appropriate to add the central control panel Zipato ZipaTile to the infrastructure of a smart home. Such a panel is a smart home controller, working with various physical interfaces and wireless networks, while the system itself runs on the Android operating system, in fact, providing applications for managing the smart home ecosystem. At the same time, if you are not comfortable using the touch panel as an interface of a smart home, today you can use the voice control of Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or other vendors.
Modern systems, positioned as smart home systems, are primarily security solutions: intruder alarms, video surveillance systems, fire alarms, air quality control systems and various electronic locks. Then it should be noted the system of comfort and environmental friendliness and economy of the house: the possibility of using solar energy, wind energy, a monitoring system for the consumption of energy, heat, water. Along with this, a smart home is unlikely to do without comfort systems: a home theater, lighting control systems and smart sockets that can provide on / off modes, for example, ordinary household appliances and other supported equipment. And many others. But all these systems, if installed independently of each other, will not interact with each other,
By the way, a huge impetus in the development of home automation systems has given the appearance of boards like Arduino. These boards are designed for rapid prototyping of electronic devices. Such a board is a printed circuit board of a certain form factor with a microcontroller sealed on it, the terminals of which are connected to connectors where expansion cards can be connected, for example, controllers of data transmission networks, data recording systems, control elements and similar solutions. Such boards or modules in Arduino-Shields terminology are available from various suppliers due to the fully open project architecture. Also, enthusiasts, if they do not find the right Shield, can always develop and solder their solution.
A huge advantage of Arduino was not only the standardization of the form factor of devices, but also the emergence of a very simple programming language similar to C / C ++ and a cross-platform development environment created on the basis of the Processing project. If Arduino's performance is insufficient, for example, to solve the tasks of a home media center, create a gateway, then you can use the achievements of another open project, but already based on the processor of the ARM family. This is a well-known Raspberry Pi project, where an operating system on the Linux kernel or a modified version of Android, as well as the Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Core operating system and others, can already work.
On the basis of Arduino it is quite possible to build an intelligent sensor or create an intelligent control device. The idea of such designs is that the microcontroller receives data from the sensor element of the sensor or connects to control systems, for example, relays and the like. Unlike simple sensors and actuators, intelligent systems can execute their program. Such smart sensors or control devices should not only work according to external commands, but also perform a pre-programmed set of actions in the event of an emergency in case of a communication line break.
In addition, it should be noted that when developing home automation systems, you should always consider the mechanisms of behavior of subsystems and components during an emergency power outage. Obviously, the logic of the intelligent control systems should include any emergency situations. Such cases should be foreseen in the system and approach to the implementation of security measures not from the standpoint of an emergency, but the standard operation of the device, which guarantees certain security and reliability measures.
As already noted, DIY or do-it-yourself solutions contribute to the rapid development of home automation systems. We should not forget that, unlike certified products, which can only be used in regulated operating conditions, for the development of prototypes it is necessary to have skills and knowledge in the field of electronics, electrical systems and all safety measures.
Components like Arduino are shipped as-is, without warranty or any risk to consumers. By commissioning our own developments on the basis of such decisions, you can negatively affect the well-being of your home, your life and others, if you do not take the necessary safety measures and take such systems, namely, as prototype products. Next, you should take care of the reliability and safety of the resulting sample, which can become a commercial product, using the example of many successful modern startups.
So, home automation is now, like never before, at the peak of the development and improvement of its consumer systems, but in fact, such projects always solve problems at the level of a specific smart home system or its individual component. And here, unlike the tasks of a smart building, a smart home does not need to support too complex calculations and algorithms to ensure the interaction of all components of the project. You can do with the resources of a small home server.
It is easy to follow the trend in the construction of centralized systems of a smart home, where each smart sensor or actuator is connected to the main node or hub (Hub). For example, one can distinguish popular open-source projects: OpenHAB, Domoticz, MajorDoMo and others, the essence of which is that the smart home server is deployed in the room and based on it the interaction of the components of the entire smart home ecosystem is built. Moreover, such a hub can itself be a fairly intelligent device, and in case of a lack of computing resources, you can always rent third-party cloud services and services, for example, cognitive services, machine learning, and others.
If you look at the trends in the development of the concept of smart building and the improvement of the Internet of things, it immediately becomes obvious that now every component, system, sensor or actuator is virtually unthinkable without access to the Internet. At the same time, there is a clear tendency to abandon centralization of management and the delegation of solving the problems of interaction between smart home systems in the cloud computing environment. Here, just the synergy of the components of a smart home lies. When, for example, according to the MQTT protocol, all systems will send messages, and devices interested in certain data will subscribe to the messages they need and make decisions based on this information that contribute to a balanced “life” of the digital home. Thus,
So far, such systems are only just beginning to be developed and improved, but there is no doubt that they have very great potential in terms of facilitating the construction of smart solutions. In this case, users of the system do not need to write many programs. According to the principle of downloading software for a smartphone from a virtual store, it will be possible to “download” and use the required software for your system, adapting it to solve your problems, getting all the advantages of smart home digital technologies.
Have you tried using home automation systems? Do you have your own successful experience in building a smart home or are you an expert in smart building technologies? Are any parts of this publication interesting or, on the contrary, incomprehensible? Share your thoughts and thoughts in the comments.
Obviously, the question arises of how to build such an ideal house or make your apartment “intellectual”? In fact, the answer is not entirely obvious.
Smart Building Digital Ecosystem
For a modern smart building (Smart Building), for example, a business center or office space, the solution to this problem is quite prosaic. A project of such a structure will already include all components and systems of industrial automation. The presence of a centralized control center for all components of the building, its ecosystem and communication with external services will be taken into account. From the point of view of management and monitoring, such a project will use industrial automation systems, automated process control systems (SCADA / HMI systems) and cloud solutions (Cloud Computing) of large vendors.
For the equipment of a digital building system, integrators may well implement specialized software components that will link together the structural components of the building. Technologies such as Microsoft Azure IoT Suite can be used to solve these problems. At the lower level, in such industrial automation systems, specialized actuators and sensors will work. These systems use standardized industrial protocols for communication with controllers and subsequent transmission of information to the cloud to visualize the processes that occur in the task, archive the data history and execute algorithms that specify the parameters of the end devices.
Currently, there are many industrial communication protocols, for example, Modbus, RS-485, Industrial Ethernet, CAN and others, which are supported by the respective controllers. Moreover, due to the de facto standardization, in the field of industrial automation you can always find a communication interface converter from one network to another. Thus, you can combine the entire network of automation devices at the solution level, for example, Industrial Ethernet. The main thing for such unified systems is the availability of the OPC driver (Open Platform Communications), which will allow the selected SCADA / HMI system to interact with installed industrial controllers.
A smart building can well be controlled by several SCADA / HMI systems, and not connected to each other. For example, systems: central air conditioning, alarm, elevator control and many other systems may well exist independently. At the same time, such building-level solutions can also use public Internet channels to access cloud services and, on their basis, can turn from a conventional industrial automation network into an intelligent system of a smart building. Moreover, many sensors and actuators, having an additional channel for accessing the Internet, also become part of the cloud. In fact, this is the concept of the Internet of things, when many devices and systems can interact with the cloud, establishing links between them on its basis.
But who will take responsibility in case of lack of access to the Internet? In fact, industrial automation systems are designed in such a way that in the event of a disconnection or other breakdowns, an emergency protocol must always be executed. For example, without communication with the "outside world", the actuator must go into a pre-planned and pre-programmed mode, even in the event of a power outage in people's livelihood systems, a set of measures should always be provided in response to such a malfunction.
In turn, a cloud solution, using the example of Microsoft Azure, can be a whole complex consisting of components that interact with each other based on the open programming interface API (Application Programming Interface). So information from sensors and smart home systems can be sent to the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub service. This cloud service allows you to both receive and transmit control commands to executive devices.
In the case of a periodic lack of Internet connection, using the Azure IoT Edge service, you can transfer some of the intellectual properties of the cloud to end devices that can execute program code autonomously and when resuming communication, synchronize their data and algorithms for working with the cloud.
In the Microsoft Azure cloud itself, in addition to using storage services, the information flow from the IoT Hub can be processed using simple Azure Stream Analytics scripts, which are written in a language similar to the standard SQL query language. In this case, the analysis of the data stream is performed in real time. The fact is that Microsoft promises very low latency for Stream Analytics services.
Logged data can be transferred to the Event Hubs service, which is designed to work with telemetry. Here, the data will be streamlined and, for example, transmitted using the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) to other data processing services. The Microsoft Azure Cloud for Internet of Things systems supports the standard Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) messaging protocols and the programming of its devices and tasks in universal languages: Java, JavaScript, C, C # and Python.
You can use the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub in conjunction with the Power BI business intelligence service to visualize the data. Also, the data that enters the cloud can be processed using machine learning algorithms, where a user in the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio environment is required to build a data processing algorithm.
For example, a project can use artificial neural network technologies, regression analysis, and other similar solutions. The developer is only required to place the desired block on the diagram. If something does not work, you can always replace the previously selected block with another one. Thus, truly intelligent algorithms and components are being introduced into the building design.
But this is not all the features of Microsoft Azure, if the developed solution is interesting and replicable, then it can be published in the Azure Marketplace and provided to other users of this cloud as a ready-made service.
Not only Microsoft provides cloud computing for the Internet of things. You should also pay attention to Amazon's AWS IoT Platform, IBM's Watson IoT cognitive tools, and solutions from other vendors. But this is another story about the choice of the architecture of the project, the protocols used and the interaction of smart devices of a smart building.
It should be understood that the scale of the decisions under consideration is enormous, however, as are their capabilities for the entire ecosystem of a smart building. Of course, such a project will be much more expensive if it is considered in relation to a private house or apartment. But for a commercial building or a separate innovative construction, these costs are justified, especially since the synergistic effect of the introduction of such a system will exceed the investment. But what should an ordinary person do, who already wants to get a flexible and intelligent infrastructure for his home and his needs?
Perspectives of Smart Home Concept
By comparing the tasks that are set for the systems of a smart building and a smart home, we can conclude that for the home, the tasks of the systems will still be more complicated, and the functionality will be more expanded. Perhaps this lies in the fact that up to now, a smart home is rather some unattainable or, more correctly, a difficultly realized goal, and we see only its rare manifestations. All the reasons for this, if you look, lie in the tasks and goals of such a house, as well as its price.
Compared with a commercial building or premises, where before the start of operation it is possible to conduct a safety briefing and the features of automated and automatic building systems, it will be much more difficult to do this for a smart home. Typically, consumers do not like to understand the details and learn to use and apply their smart electronics intuitively. From the point of view of consumers, as it should be, this approach is natural, but it is worth noting that only very recently began to appear systems that are safe for others and at the same time have a convenient and intuitive interface. Moreover, children, pets, and unsuspecting guests and so on may well become residents of a smart home, or rather its rooms.
On the other hand, another factor that hinders the rapid development of the components of a smart home should be noted - this is the relatively high price of its components. For example, the basis of a smart home is a lot of different electrical and electromechanical systems, information communications, intelligent sensors and actuators, and we should not forget about the data center or the “cybernetic brain” of a smart home. Of course, the price of such components should be available to many groups of different consumers.
Modern electronics is developing rapidly, which leads in general to the cost reduction of a smart home. Literally in a few years, for example, generations of bulbs have changed: from a conventional incandescent lamp controlled by a dimmer, fluorescent housekeepers to LED lamps and, finally, the appearance of smart bulbs. Such a smart lamp, for example, Philips Hue, Xiaomi LED Ceiling Light, or any simpler one, is an LED lamp with an ordinary base or a whole lighting device, but in this device there is a controller that controls the lighting: brightness and / or color scheme, depending on the model. But the main thing is that the device is equipped with a built-in controller, which can be connected via standard communication channels: Wi-Fi (802.11), Bluetooth, and control the lamp from your smartphone.
Using the simplest example of smart lamps, it becomes clear that designing a smart home is a very difficult task. Everything rests on standards and compatibility. If everything is more or less clear with the standards, because they are well documented, then it would seem that the compatibility of devices over data transmission channels can simply be ensured by a gateway. It allows you to “forward” data packets from one physical network to another, for example, from the same ZigBee network or from the popular specialized Z-Wave control command transmission network, designed specifically for solving smart home tasks, to a home local area network, for example, built on Based on wired Ethernet technology and a Wi-Fi wireless router. But at the same time, the main compatibility problem, in fact, is hidden in the content of the data packets themselves.
If physical communication networks are well documented and standardized, then the internal protocols of the same smart lamps or other devices are de facto implemented and documented within the manufacturing company or even isolated at the level of its one device line. But not everything is so bad for the end user. Recently, one can observe a remarkable tendency to open internal device data exchange protocols in the form of software APIs. Based on such open systems, it is already possible to integrate devices from different suppliers into a single smart home infrastructure. Ultimately, all you need to do is download the appropriate application for your smartphone.
Actually, the smartphone is becoming a single information and communication center of a smart home. Some manufacturers, for example, Xiaomi in the Redmi line, often integrate an infrared transmitter into a smartphone. This allows, by downloading a specialized program, to connect to old equipment that is controlled by a remote control with an infrared signal. After that, a regular TV, music center or air conditioning can receive commands from a smartphone, the main thing is the presence of a transmitter in the phone and support for the equipment model in the selected program from the Google Play Store or a similar solution to the Apple ecosystem.
On the other hand, a smartphone can control and interact with modern components of a smart home that are adapted to work with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and, of course, those that have direct Internet access. A smartphone may well become a kind of sensor. For example, based on determining the location of the owner of the smartphone, the Nest smart thermostat can understand whether the owner is inside the house or already far beyond it and, accordingly, adjusts the optimal heating mode to the situation. At the same time, the smartphone does not become indispensable when interacting with intelligent systems. You can always go to the Nest device and change its operation parameters. It should be noted that these thermostats can interact with compatible devices from other manufacturers,
It may also be quite appropriate to add the central control panel Zipato ZipaTile to the infrastructure of a smart home. Such a panel is a smart home controller, working with various physical interfaces and wireless networks, while the system itself runs on the Android operating system, in fact, providing applications for managing the smart home ecosystem. At the same time, if you are not comfortable using the touch panel as an interface of a smart home, today you can use the voice control of Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or other vendors.
Modern systems, positioned as smart home systems, are primarily security solutions: intruder alarms, video surveillance systems, fire alarms, air quality control systems and various electronic locks. Then it should be noted the system of comfort and environmental friendliness and economy of the house: the possibility of using solar energy, wind energy, a monitoring system for the consumption of energy, heat, water. Along with this, a smart home is unlikely to do without comfort systems: a home theater, lighting control systems and smart sockets that can provide on / off modes, for example, ordinary household appliances and other supported equipment. And many others. But all these systems, if installed independently of each other, will not interact with each other,
By the way, a huge impetus in the development of home automation systems has given the appearance of boards like Arduino. These boards are designed for rapid prototyping of electronic devices. Such a board is a printed circuit board of a certain form factor with a microcontroller sealed on it, the terminals of which are connected to connectors where expansion cards can be connected, for example, controllers of data transmission networks, data recording systems, control elements and similar solutions. Such boards or modules in Arduino-Shields terminology are available from various suppliers due to the fully open project architecture. Also, enthusiasts, if they do not find the right Shield, can always develop and solder their solution.
A huge advantage of Arduino was not only the standardization of the form factor of devices, but also the emergence of a very simple programming language similar to C / C ++ and a cross-platform development environment created on the basis of the Processing project. If Arduino's performance is insufficient, for example, to solve the tasks of a home media center, create a gateway, then you can use the achievements of another open project, but already based on the processor of the ARM family. This is a well-known Raspberry Pi project, where an operating system on the Linux kernel or a modified version of Android, as well as the Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Core operating system and others, can already work.
On the basis of Arduino it is quite possible to build an intelligent sensor or create an intelligent control device. The idea of such designs is that the microcontroller receives data from the sensor element of the sensor or connects to control systems, for example, relays and the like. Unlike simple sensors and actuators, intelligent systems can execute their program. Such smart sensors or control devices should not only work according to external commands, but also perform a pre-programmed set of actions in the event of an emergency in case of a communication line break.
In addition, it should be noted that when developing home automation systems, you should always consider the mechanisms of behavior of subsystems and components during an emergency power outage. Obviously, the logic of the intelligent control systems should include any emergency situations. Such cases should be foreseen in the system and approach to the implementation of security measures not from the standpoint of an emergency, but the standard operation of the device, which guarantees certain security and reliability measures.
As already noted, DIY or do-it-yourself solutions contribute to the rapid development of home automation systems. We should not forget that, unlike certified products, which can only be used in regulated operating conditions, for the development of prototypes it is necessary to have skills and knowledge in the field of electronics, electrical systems and all safety measures.
Components like Arduino are shipped as-is, without warranty or any risk to consumers. By commissioning our own developments on the basis of such decisions, you can negatively affect the well-being of your home, your life and others, if you do not take the necessary safety measures and take such systems, namely, as prototype products. Next, you should take care of the reliability and safety of the resulting sample, which can become a commercial product, using the example of many successful modern startups.
So, home automation is now, like never before, at the peak of the development and improvement of its consumer systems, but in fact, such projects always solve problems at the level of a specific smart home system or its individual component. And here, unlike the tasks of a smart building, a smart home does not need to support too complex calculations and algorithms to ensure the interaction of all components of the project. You can do with the resources of a small home server.
It is easy to follow the trend in the construction of centralized systems of a smart home, where each smart sensor or actuator is connected to the main node or hub (Hub). For example, one can distinguish popular open-source projects: OpenHAB, Domoticz, MajorDoMo and others, the essence of which is that the smart home server is deployed in the room and based on it the interaction of the components of the entire smart home ecosystem is built. Moreover, such a hub can itself be a fairly intelligent device, and in case of a lack of computing resources, you can always rent third-party cloud services and services, for example, cognitive services, machine learning, and others.
If you look at the trends in the development of the concept of smart building and the improvement of the Internet of things, it immediately becomes obvious that now every component, system, sensor or actuator is virtually unthinkable without access to the Internet. At the same time, there is a clear tendency to abandon centralization of management and the delegation of solving the problems of interaction between smart home systems in the cloud computing environment. Here, just the synergy of the components of a smart home lies. When, for example, according to the MQTT protocol, all systems will send messages, and devices interested in certain data will subscribe to the messages they need and make decisions based on this information that contribute to a balanced “life” of the digital home. Thus,
So far, such systems are only just beginning to be developed and improved, but there is no doubt that they have very great potential in terms of facilitating the construction of smart solutions. In this case, users of the system do not need to write many programs. According to the principle of downloading software for a smartphone from a virtual store, it will be possible to “download” and use the required software for your system, adapting it to solve your problems, getting all the advantages of smart home digital technologies.
Have you tried using home automation systems? Do you have your own successful experience in building a smart home or are you an expert in smart building technologies? Are any parts of this publication interesting or, on the contrary, incomprehensible? Share your thoughts and thoughts in the comments.
Interesting resources and links:
- Architecting IOT for Smart Buildings: Deep dive into Microsoft's first engagement on energy smart buildings - Channel 9
- Connecting Buildings to the Cloud for a Greener Planet - Microsoft Customer Stories
- Microsoft Azure IoT Suite - Microsoft IoT Cloud Solution
- How the AWS IoT Platform Works - Amazon Web Services
- Watson Internet of Things - IBM
- Inside an Apple smart home - TechCrunch
- Philips Hue LED Wi-Fi lamp review - THG.ru
- Nest - 3rd Generation Learning Thermostat - PCMag Russian Edition
- Zipato ZipaTile Smart Home Management System - iXBT.com
- How to build an Arduino powered smart home - CodeProject
- 11 DIY Projects to Turn Your House Into a Smart Home - Gizmodo
- Comparison of Google Home and Amazon Alexa - Geek magazine
- 9 Home Automation Open-Source Platforms for Your projects - Random Nerd Tutorials
- How IoT & smart home automation will change the way we live - Business Insider