Integrating technologies for building a wireless home automation system: A practical implementation

In recent years, the development of technologies for automating homes and buildings has highly increased, boomed mainly by wireless communication and microcontrollers development. The problem is that the cost is hardly attractive resulting in applications usually in fancy buildings. However, a great variety of features is currently available on mobile devices, resulting in good candidates to reduce cost and to improve acceptance. Several researches have discussed about the architecture and design of Building Automation Systems, but only a few discuss the reuse of easily available technologies. This paper describes a practical implementation of a Building Automation System which combines the use of technologies available on smart phones with Wireless Sensor Network and low cost microcontrollers. A prototype was developed and can be applied to houses or buildings. The prototype was tested with the more usual appliances and the performance of communication was evaluated.