UPISmartHome V.2.0 – A Consumer Product of Smart Home System with an ESP8266 as the Basis

Abstract

An ESP-Mesh-based smart home system was developed in the previous research using the ESP8266 feature with 3 different nodes, such as mechanical (door lock), electrical (fan, generic power switch, or power plug), and temperature & humidity sensors. This research focused more on the addition of nodes into the IoT-based smart home infrastructure. The purpose is to design, implement, and test hardware and software intended to be incorporated into the ESP8266-based system for normal functionality. These nodes include 1) RGB lamp that is controlled by colour lightning, 2) horizontal and 3) vertical curtain 4) PIR sensor for detecting the presence of humans (suspicious people) around the house, 5) liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sensor for examining leakage of gas cylinders within the house, 6) smoke sensor for fire detection, and 7) an electric fan using the soft-control (PWM-based) method. The fan is observed to increase in functionality from the previous research, which is regulated by a switch only (hard-control). Meanwhile, the new android application monitors the seven nodes defined without limitations. The method used by the application includes the determination of system specifications, hardware and software design (ESP8266 and android programming), implementation, and verification. The system evaluation procedure used in the previous research comprised 1) RSSI measurement, 2) power consumption, 3) Mesh connection, 4) functionality test of UPISmartHome Apps V.2.0, and 5) the overall system (hardware & software integration). The test results by observing the RSSI parameters reveal that all nodes can be managed (control & monitor) remotely via the android application with an average distance of about 70 meters without an internet connection. Furthermore, all nodes are successfully connected to the ESP-Mesh network with effective self-routing capabilities between 40 – 50 meters because the distance between nodes above 70m cannot do self-configuration; this is the ability of ESP8266. The power consumed by each node both in idle and active conditions is not more than 2 Watts.