mikel_berdufi_homeautomationarticle
TRANSCRIPT
Best Home Automation Technologies & devices
2014-2015
Mikel Berdufi
Universidad de Murcia
Campus Universitario de Espinardo, s/n, 30100 Espinardo, Murcia, Spain
Abstract. This paper will give you an overview about Home automation tech-
nologies used today and some of the best devices that exist now in the market.
Here will also be mentioned some technical details about this devices, what tech-
nologies they use and so on.
1 Introduction
Years ago home automation wasn’t a face of everyday life. Today gradually things
are changing, home automation and technologies that provide this automation are grow-
ing very fast. Now with home automation you are able to stay connected with your
home system every moment whenever and wherever you want. There are a lot of smart
technologies that are helping us with our everyday and Home automation is part of the
smart world. We will explain better what we mean with home automation in the next
section. We will talk also about technologies, standards, devices that use this technolo-
gies and so on.
2 Home Automation
In this section we will introduce home automation as a concept and give some infor-
mation to make your ideas clear about home automation.
2.1 What do we mean with home automation?
Well, from the word we can understand that it is related with the automation of the
home, housework or household activity. The idea is to have a centralized control system
for almost all devices you have and use in your home, for example:
─ Lighting
─ Appliances
─ Security locks of gates and doors
So there is a system that integrates electrical devices in a house with each other.
Using this concept you will be able to gain control on some of domestic activities
like:
─ home entertainment systems
─ houseplant
─ yard watering
─ pet feeding
─ changing the ambiance "scenes" for different events (such as dinners or parties)
─ use of domestic robots.
All this devices are connected with each other through HOME NETWORK or home
area network (HAN) that is a local area network with the purpose to facilitate com-
munication among digital devices present inside, or within the close vicinity of a
home. As a transmission media can be used:
─ Wireless
─ Structured cabling
─ Existing home wiring
There are some standards technologies defined worldwide to provide communica-
tion of devices through this network. We will talk in the next section about this tech-
nologies.
But what is more interesting is that you can control the system everywhere and any-
where, meaning that HAN allows you to be connected to the system through
smartphone or tablet. This makes the system very powerful.
2.2 Futures of Home Automation
As we mentioned above home automation is being used more and more in our days.
It make sour life easier. Here we will mention some of the advantages of using a
home automation system.
Some Advantages of using a home automation system:
─ Lighting (Save energy and money dimming or turning off lights while you are away)
─ Security (Monitor your home while you are away from your smartphone or tablet)
─ Garage (control your garage door from any location)
─ Thermostat (Control your thermostat while away to ensure heating & cooling cost
stay low)
─ Locks (Monitor and control locks on every exterior door of your home)
In other words Home automation provides the luxury of keeping tabs on your home
at all times.
3 Technologies
In this section we will mention some of the most important and actual technologies
related to Home Automation. We will be focused more on communication protocols
and will give a comparison table between some of this protocols. We will mention also
some of the alliances that are developing and standardizing technologies related to
Home automation.
3.1 Some alliances developing and standardizing technologies
HomePlug :
HomePlug is the family name for various power line communications specifications
that support networking over existing home electrical wiring. Several specifications
exist under the HomePlug moniker, with each offering unique performance capabilities
and coexistence or compatibility with other HomePlug specifications. The HomePlug
Powerline Alliance was formed to develop standards and technology for enabling de-
vices to communicate with each other, and the Internet, over existing home electrical
wiring. One of the greatest technical challenges was finding a way to reduce sensitivity
to the electrical noise that is inevitably present on power lines. Whenever an appliance
is turned on or off, it creates electrical noise that can interfere with data transfer through
the wiring. Noise sensitivity was problematic in early powerline technology, though
later versions have solved this problem.
There are some version of this technology:
HomePlug 1.0
─ First introduced in June, 2001
─ Provides a data rate of 14 Mbit/s
─ Has been replaced by HomePlug AV
HomePlug AV
─ Was introduced in August 2005
─ Provides sufficient bandwidth for applications such as HDTV and VoIP.
─ Offers a peak data rate of 200 Mbs at the physical layer
─ About 80 Mbs at the MAC layer.
HomePlug AV2
─ Was introduced in January 2012
─ is interoperable with HomePlug AV and HomePlug GreenPHY devices
─ offers gigabit-class PHY-rate
─ first generation are generally considered to be 20% faster than HomePlug AV
HomePlug Green PHY
─ Is a subset of HomePlug AV that is intended for use in the smart grid
─ Has peak rates of 10 Mbit/s
─ Is designed to go into smart meters and smaller appliances
─ Uses up to 75% less energy than AV.
─
HomePlug Access BPL
─ Refers to a to-the-home broadband access technology.
─ Subsequently contributed and merged into the IEEE 1901 standard
HomePNA Alliance.
HomePNA is another alliance or an industry group that promotes standards for using
existing phone lines and jacks to interconnect computers within a home. The HPNA's
HomePNA standard is one of several leading technologies for home network.
HomePNA creates industry specifications which it then standardizes under the Interna-
tional Telecommunication Union (ITU) standards body. HomePNA also promotes the
technology, tests, and certifies member products as HomePNA compliant.
There are some versions:
HomePNA 1.0 – developed in 1990
HomePNA 2.0
HomePNA 3.0-developed in 2005
HomePNA 3.1-developed in 2007
Some of the advantages of the last version of this technology are:
─ You can use you actual home wiring system, without building a new home wiring
─ HomePNA operates at different frequencies on the same coax or phone wires
─ Some products offer data rates up to 320 Mbit/s
─ Maximum of 64 devices can be connected.
─ Uses standard Ethernet drivers
─ The required hardware is not expensive.
Home Grid Forum.
HomeGrid Forum (HGF) is an industry alliance that brings together the world’s best
in technology innovators, silicon vendors, system manufacturers and service providers
to promote G.hn,(gigabit home network) the globally recognized gigabit home net-
working technology based on ITU-T standards.
G.hn is the technology behind the fastest and cleanest home networking service plat-
form available today – it works over any wire in the home – and out performs any
competing home network technology.
Based on a common vision of migrating the market to G.hn technology, HomeGrid
Forum (HGF) merged with the HomePNA Alliance in May 2013, forming an industry
alliance of over 70 members including some of the world’s largest Service Providers,
system manufacturers, and silicon companies
ZigBee.
ZigBee is the Global Wireless Language Connecting Dramatically Different Devices
to Work Together and Enhance Everyday Life.The purpose of ZigBee is to create a
Much Needed Global Wireless language. ZigBee gives a Voice to the myriad of
everyday devices that surround us as we go about our daily lives.
These devices are overlooked in an IT centric world:
─ Light switches, thermostats, electricity meters
─ More complex sensor devices found abundantly in the
commercial building and industrial automation worlds.
The goal of the ZigBee Alliance is to provide the consumer with ultimate flexibility,
mobility, and ease of use by building wireless intelligence and capabilities into
everyday devices.
There are 2 Available Public Application Profiles:
–ZigBee Smart Energy
–ZigBee Home Automation
And of course we are interested in ZigBee Home Automation as this article is focused
in Home automation.
ZigBee Home Automation is the industry leading global standard helping to create
smarter homes that enhance the comfort, convenience, security and energy manage-
ment for the consumer.It is the technology of choice for world-leading service provid-
ers, installers and retailers.The latest version of ZigBee Home Automation standard,
which is fully interoperable with previous versions, adds several important new fea-
tures that improve the battery life for security sensors to over seven years, standardize
pairing of devices and simplify installation and maintenance for consumers and cus-
tom installers alike. These features have a significant impact on operational and de-
vice costs to service providers and quality of service to consumers.
All ZigBee Home Automation products are ZigBee Certified to perform regardless
of manufacturer, allowing anyone to purchase with confidence. ZigBee Home Au-
tomation delivers a standard that can make every home a smarter, safer and more
energy efficient environment for consumers and families.
Some futures of this technology are shown in the image below:
Fig. 1.
3.2 Home automation most popular protocols
Here in this section we will describe some of the most popular communication
protocols used by different devices for home automation.At the end of the section you
will find a comparison table of this protocols.You can find a full list of this protocols
in this site : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automation_protocols
Some of the most popular protocols used in home automation are :
C-Bus (protocol) characteristics:
─ Based on a seven layer OSI model
─ The maximum length of cable used on a C-Bus network is 1000 meters.
─ Used in the control of home automation systems, as well as commercial building
lighting control systems
─ Uses a dedicated low-voltage cable or two-way wireless network to carry command
and control signals.
─ It is used in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the Middle East, Russia, USA, South
Africa, the UK and other parts of Europe including Greece and Romania.
─ Using one of Clipsal's C-Bus interface modules (PCI for RS232 or USB and CNI for
Ethernet TCP/IP), you can interact with other home automation systems, or with
applications on devices like Android, iPad or iPhone.
EnOcean.
─ Is an energy harvesting (batteryless) wireless technology used primarily in building
automation systems.
─ is based on the energetically efficient exploitation of slight mechanical motion and
other potentials from the environment, such as indoor light and temperature differ-
ences, using the principles of energy harvesting.
─ EnOcean-based products (such as sensors and light switches) perform without bat-
teries and are engineered to operate maintenance-free.
─ Is also applied to other applications in industry, transportation, logistics and smart
homes.
─ Was ratified as the international standard ISO/IEC 14543-3-10
─ Covers the OSI layers 1-3 which are the physical, data link and networking layers.
─ The data can be transmitted wirelessly over a distance of up to 300 meters.
─ Wireless data packets are relatively small (14 bytes long and are transmitted at 125
kbit/s).
Insteon.
─ Enables light switches, lights, thermostats, motion sensors, and other devices to in-
teroperate through power lines, radio frequency (RF) communications, or both Top
devices and their Technical Details.
─ Every message received by an Insteon compatible device undergoes error detection
and correction and is then repeated.
─ It employs a dual-mesh networking topology
─ All devices are peers and each device autonomously transmits, receives, and repeats
messages.
─ Every Insteon device has its own unique identifier code, similar to a MAC address.
─ Data rate Sustained average case: 180 bit/s.
─ memory requirements :
RAM: 80 bytes
ROM: 3 kilobytes
KNX (standard).
─ OSI-based network communications protocol for intelligent buildings.
─ KNX defines several physical communication media:
Twisted pair wiring (inherited from the BatiBUS and EIB Instabus standards)
Powerline networking (inherited from EIB and EHS - similar to that used by X10)
Radio (KNX-RF)
Infrared
Ethernet (also known as EIBnet/IP or KNXnet/IP)
─ is designed to be independent of any particular hardware platform.
─ is approved as an open standard
─ The most common form of installation is over twisted pair medium.
─ The KNX Association member companies have more than 7000 KNX certified prod-
uct in their catalogues.
Universal power line bus
─ is a protocol for communication among devices used for home automation.
─ It uses power line wiring for signaling and control.
─ was developed and released in 1999
─ UPB has an improved transmission rate and higher reliability.
─ Household electrical wiring such as Romex or BX is used to send digital data be-
tween UPB devices.
─ While transmitting, one UPB Pulse is generated each half-cycle of the 60 Hz AC
electrical power cycle.
─ The position of each UPB Pulse determines its value as either 0, 1, 2, or 3 and this
method of encoding data is called Pulse-position modulation (PPM).
─ UPB communication has a raw speed of 240 bits per second.
X-10.
─ It primarily uses power line wiring for signaling and control.
─ Signals involve brief radio frequency bursts representing digital information.
─ was developed in 1975 by Pico Electronics of Glenrothes, Scotland,
─ X10 remains popular in the home environment with millions of units in use world-
wide, and inexpensive availability of new components.
─ X10 control protocol consist of a four bit house code
─ Inexpensive X10 devices only receive commands and do not acknowledge their sta-
tus to the rest of the network.
─ Solid-state switches used in X10 controls pass a very small leakage current.
─ One problem with X10 is excessive attenuation of signals between the two live con-
ductors in the 3-wire 120/240 volt system used in typical North American.
─ X10 signals can only be transmitted one command at a time.
─ The X10 protocol is slow.
This are the most popular protocols used today and below is a comparison table between
the protocol and technologies we have mentioned.
Fig. 2.
4 Best devices
We mentioned a lot of alliances that are working on developing technologies and
devices that run with their technologies. There are a lot of big companies behind this
alliances that help them in this process. Now a days there is a huge number of devices
on the market. We will mention some of the best devices that can be used to build the
smartest home in the world. We will be focused in this categories of devices:
─ Air Conditioner
─ Home Lock
─ Video Monitor
─ Thermostat
─ Humidity Monitor
─ Sensor System
4.1 Best Smart Home System
Wink Smart Home Hub
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (aka Bluetooth
Smart or Bluetooth 4.0), ZigBee, Z-Wave, Lu-
tron's Clear Connect – Home Depot's Wink
Hub supplies nearly every smart home wireless
connection standard over which the dozens of Wink smart home devices operate.
But unlike other hub-based smart home ecosystems, many Home Depot/Wink de-
vices (those with a blue labels on their retail packaging) don't require the hub, such
as the Aros air conditioner. Best of all, if you buy two Wink-compatible gadgets at
Home Depot before Labor Day, the Hub is just 99 cents.
4.2 Best Smart Home Lock
Kwikset Kevo
A mere touch of your finger unlocks or locks
this otherwise normal-looking front door bolt
lock. You can assign virtual keys permanently
or temporarily, monitor ins and outs remotely
and receive activity alerts via the Kevo app.
Kevo's quotidian aesthetics are actually part of
its security function – unlike other, perhaps admittedly smarter, locks, nefarious folks
will have no clue to Kevo's intelligence. And in case of a technical snafu, Kevo can be
opened with a reliable regular key. Kevo also is due to be incorporated into both the
Home Depot/Wink and Staples Connect ecosystems. By utilizing either Zigbee or Z-
Wave RF protocols that integrate with security or home automation systems supporting
these two RF protocols.
4.3 Best Video Monitor
Dropcam Pro
Your home just got an extra pair of eyes: the $199
Dropcam Pro surveillance takes continuous 720p
video, and features two-way audio, sharp night vision
and a powerful digital zoom, letting you see up close
what may be lurking in your living room. The Pro
model upgrades to a glass lens from plastic in the
original model, and adds a motion sensor to the body. Go online or into the companion app to
take a look at your home through Dropcam Pro whenever you want, and set alerts for peculiar
motions and sounds. Dropcam Pro is the device you to get for those who don’t really want to
leave home. Dropcam is essentially betting on Z-Wave and ZigBee making way for Bluetooth
LE to be the future protocol of choice for the connected home.
4.4 Best Thermostat
Nest Learning
Wasting money on unused air-conditioning or
heating no longer needs to be a concern with the
Nest Learning Thermostat. This handy little de-
vice learns your schedule in about a week and
programs itself to control your home's internal
temperature. Or, you can manually adjust things
from your smartphone. The folks at Nest insist
that 4 out of 5 people can install this smart de-
vice in 30 minutes or less, but you can get a pro-
fessional to do it for you. The company also
claims their thermostat will save you up to 20
percent on your bills.
Some technical details about this device are shown to the figure below:
Fig. 3.
4.5 Best Sensor System
Sense Mother
Sense Mother is the quirkiest way to keep
track of everything in your home. The Russian
doll-like hub lovingly called Mother collects in-
formation from little cookies that you can place
anywhere, even on your body. Choose an app
from Sense Mother’s app collection and assign
actions to cookies to start tracking your life: put
a cookie in your pocket for a makeshift pedom-
eter, put one on your door to receive notifica-
tions when someone enters or leaves your home, and much more. Get a bird’s eye view
of your data using Sense board to check all of the activity from your cookies.
Technical details:
─ Mother, from Sen.se,is 6.3 inches tall and weighs one pound
─ Mother connects to your router or internet box through an Ethernet cable
─ Motion Cookies communicate with Mother using a proprietary radio standard
developed by Sen.se on the 915 MHz frequency band (in North America) 8
68MHz (in europe).
─ Motion Cookies are powered by CR2016 button cells, and they’re replaceable
5 Conclusion
As we see the most used technology by devices in our days is ZigBee.Zigbee is very
powerful in the market because there are a lot of big companies that are supporting the
development of this technologies and the development of Zigbee certified devices. At
the end we can say that technology is helping us more and more and Home automation
is going to be more popular than it is in our days.
6 References
1. Home-automation-benefits:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/06/home-
automation-benefits-infographic/
2. Home-automation-systems-review http://home-automation-
systems-review.toptenreviews.com/a-guide-to-
home-automation-protocols.html
3. Digitaltrends :
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/zigbee-vs-
zwave-vs-insteon-home-automation-protocols-
explained/
4. Home-automation-an-overview :
http://www.slideshare.net/SmartAutomation/smart-
home-automation-an-overview-27449374
5. Best-smart-home
gadgets:http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-smart-
home-gadgets,review-2014.html
6. NEST_Learning_Themostat brochure :
http://www.revisionheat.com/pdfs/NEST_Learning_T
hemostat_brochure.pdf