Design and development of an automatic small-scale house for teaching domotics

This paper presents the design and development characteristics of an automatic small-scale house (1:12). Several installations are controlled: seven light points, five plugs, heating in one room, technical alarms, intruder alarms, two garden irrigation areas, one blind and communications. The architecture of the centralised domotics system is based on a programmable logic controller Simatic S7-200, and on a tactile operator panel TP070. The PLC manages all control functions. External communications via modem are also available. Thus, it is possible to receive alarm messages by telephone and to operate several components in the house by telephonic remote control. The design, programming and debugging of the domotics system have been done using the software applications Simatica 2.1 and Visir 1.6, both developed by the authors´ research group. The use of this automatic small-scale house in their laboratory has constituted an excellent test bed for the detection and debugging of system configuration and programming errors. This prototype is an optimal device for teaching automation techniques applied to domotics