12-06-2013, 04:52 PM
Remote-Controlled Home Automation Systems with Different Network Technologies
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Abstract
This paper describes an investigation into the potential for remote controlled operation of home automationsystems. It considers problems with their implementation, discusses possible solutions through various network technologies and indicates how to optimize the use of such systems. The home is an eternal, heterogeneous, distributed computing environment (Greaves, 2002) which certainly requires a careful study before developing
any suitable Home Automation System (HAS) that will accomplish its requirements.Nevertheless the latest attempts at introducing Home Automation Systems in actual homes for all kinds of users are starting to be successful thanks to the continuous standardization process that is lowering the prices and making devices more
useful and easier to use for the end user. Even so several important issues are always tobe handled strictly before developing and installing a Home Automation System; factors like security, reliability, usefulness, robustness and price are critical to determine if the final product will accomplish the expected requirements.
Introduction:
Evolution of Home Automation Systems.
The concept of “automation” has existed for many years. It began with a student connecting two electric wires to the hands of an alarm clock in order to close a circuit of a battery and light bulb. Later, companies developed automated systems of their own to control alarms, sensors, actuators and video cameras and, in so doing, created the first automated buildings. The term “intelligent home” followed. Due to the obvious advantages of these systems, their influence on the conventional home was predictable and finally, in 1988, the term domoticswas coined. “Domotics is the application of computer and robot technologies to domestic appliances. It is a portmanteau word formed from domus (Latin, meaning house) androbotics” (click on this link for more information http://en.wikipediawiki/Domotics). A modern definition of Domotics could be the interaction of technologies and services applied to different buildings with the purpose of increasing security, comfort, communications and energy savings (Moraes et al., 2000).
Why Remote Control?
Wireless technologies represent a rapidly emerging area of growth and importance for
providing ubiquitous access to the network; WLANs based on the IEEE 802.11 standard are being implemented constantly in the houses and Broadband wireless (BW) is also an
emerging wireless technology which is competing with Digital Subscriber Line (DSL).
According to this, it makes sense that the logical direction about managing HASs in the near future is going to be by means of a remote control. But wireless technologies in domotics should be implemented carefully.
This paper aims to answer the following questions:
• What are the benefits of using remote control in domotics?
• What are the main issues of using remote control in domotics?
• After studying issues and benefits of remote controlling, is it still profitable to use
remote controlled HASs?
Architecture of the Remote-Controlled HAS
It is clearly necessary to have an organized and defined structure for HASs (Cortes, 2002). Since their creation normally involves different areas of electronics, architecture andcomputing, there are many different ways to develop solutions and not all of them can be applied to all users. This makes them difficult to implement due to the high impactthat they might have on the everyday user. Using an overall view, a Domotics project can bedivided into three stages: Study, Definition and Installation. In the study section, it is very important to know which benefits the users are going to get with the project and which technologies are going to be used. An optimal study will help considerably at thedefinition stage where inputs, outputs and processes are more defined. The last two steps can be completed with the help of software tools, although not all HASs have to follow this model. A well defined domotics model is the one used in the project Amigo (Kalaoja, 2006), this project is based in a semantic modelling of services that enables interoperability of heterogeneous services. The ontology may facilitate clear description on how far each device is suitable for different kinds of information and different interaction demand.
Conclusions and Future Work
The process of standardization in Domotics is becoming the most important factor to
introduce an automated environment in all homes. There are already E-home standards
settling up in Europe, the example is the European Installation Bus (EIB) that is the world's leading system for "intelligent" electrical installation networking (http://www.konnex). Not to forget That UPnP providing total compatibility withXML and IP. I agree with SimonAurell (2005) that the most likely way of interfacing with devices in the future will be IP; it is more flexible, scalable and compatible. The biggest issue will be probably to make it usable and accessible to all kinds of users.
Since this is a new field of investigation, the results of the project are likely to be worthyof further analysis. The completion of a whole cycle of control between a remote device and the building will be critical for the success of the research; once control is achieved a meticulous study about how users and the system interact has to be done. It is important to clarify that this research does not exclude local control of HASs - it is simply focused on remote control as an important field for HASs in the future. To conclude, this research should help other researchers to achieve their goals with their future HAS projects and it will contribute positively to the E-Home community .