30-07-2012, 04:58 PM
A System for Smart-Home Control of Appliances Based on Timer and Speech Interaction
A System for Smart-Home.pdf (Size: 210.23 KB / Downloads: 56)
ABSTRACT
The main objective of this work is to design and construct a microcomputer based system: to control
electric appliances such as light, fan, heater, washing machine, motor, TV, etc. The paper discusses two
major approaches to control home appliances. The first involves controlling home appliances using timer
option. The second approach is to control home appliances using voice command. Moreover, it is also
possible to control appliances using Graphical User Interface. The parallel port is used to transfer data
from computer to the particular device to be controlled. An interface box is designed to connect the high
power loads to the parallel port. This system will play an important role for the elderly and physically
disable people to control their home appliances in intuitive and flexible way. We have developed a system,
which is able to control eight electric appliances properly in these three modes.
INTRODUCTION
Personal computers are increasingly becoming the
platform of choice to design and implement control
algorithms because it is simple to write, modify and
update software programs that implement a control
algorithm. In this project, we use the personal
computer to control the electric appliances. For
example turning high power AC loads such as lights,
fans, heater etc. ON or OFF. To successfully integrate
the digital controller with the analog plant, an
interface device is used within the PC that can
perform the necessary tasks [1]. In this document, we
present the design of the interface box. The interface
box can be controlled by the computer by connecting
to the parallel port and written a program in any
preferable language.
HARDWARE DESIGN OF THE INTERFACE BOX
In this section, we present the design of the interface
box that is used to connect high power loads to the
computer. Details about the components that comprise
the interface box are also shown here. We have shown
how to interface a relay and an AC load
Computer Interfacing
PC’s parallel port is a 25 pins D-shaped female
connector in the back of the computer [3], [4]. This is
an inexpensive and yet powerful platform for
implementing projects dealing with the control of real
world peripherals. The parallel port is made up of three
different sections. These are data lines, control lines
and status lines. There are 8 data lines, and they are the
primary means of getting information out of the port.
The control lines are another 4 outputs. The status lines
are a standard parallel port’s inputs. There are 5 of
them. The fig.4 shows all the pins of the parallel port.
The pins 18,19,20,21,22,23,24 and 25 are all ground
pins.
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
We have implemented our software using Visual
Basic 6.0 as programming language and Microsoft
voice engine tools for speech recognition purpose.
The develop software can be run under Windows
98/ME/NT/2000/2000 Server/XP.
CONCLUSION
The developed system is a robust combination of a
number of diverse technologies, to construct a speech
activated portal to home appliances to assists users
who are disable and in home and workplaces. This
system can control only eight electric appliances and
can be further control 256 electric devices in industry
or large organization through a single PC by
upgrading the interface box and a little modification in
the program.