Design of Smart Universal Remote using Mobile for Home Automation

Abstract

Controlling Home Appliances remotely is a main part of automation. There is a great deal of inconvenience in controlling each digital home appliance with its own separate remote. In this paper we present an advanced universal remote which can control and regulate lights, fans and also any IR controlled Home appliance like TV, home theater, air conditioner etc. This paper gives the design on how to build this remote and how we can turn our smart phone into a true universal remote which will be both versatile and have The rapid growth in mobile communication system in present era is changing people's life and work style. Fast development of mobile technology has brought the world in our grasp. Functionalities of electronic gadgets like computer, IPod, camera etc. are now made available in a single mobile phone. Smart phones are already feature-perfect and can be made to communicate to any other devices in an ad-hoc network with connectivity options like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Most of the home appliances use Infrared based controlling systems. Therefore, a simple mobile phone cannot be used directly to control any such appliances. Some special hardware is required to turn a mobile phone into a universal remote capable of controlling the IR based home appliances. Automation of the surrounding environment of a modern human being allows increased work efficiency and comfort. There has been a significant development in the area of an individual's routine tasks and those that can be automated. So, many workers are trying to implement universal remote using smart mobile as a part of Home Automation System. Panth and Jivani (1) have developed a Home Automation System using mobile in Android platform. The system has been designed to automate 8 bit Bluetooth enabled micro controller, which controls lights and fans using on and off relay switches. But this system lacks the capability of controlling any IR controlled devices.