Humankind has long been thinking about automating household management and everyday tasks. Imagine: you wake up, go to the kitchen, and with a wave of your hand, jazz music plays in the room, the coffee machine turns on, and toast with a perfect crust is prepared. With the advent of smart home systems, this has become a reality, not a scene from a movie about the distant future. Thanks to technology, we can control our homes even from a distance, but we cannot consistently implement a full-fledged smart home system at our homes. Oleksandr Bulday, Senior Java Developer, Levi9, told Mind how to improve the quality of life and whether it is possible to turn an ordinary house into a smart home with a love of engineering and $50.
“The smart” home is a fairly new phenomenon, although the first attempts to automate household management were made in the late 19th century. In 1898, Nikola Tesla introduced the remote control, which laid the foundation for the smart home concept. Over the next century, humanity received a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine, a computer, and other “miracles of technology” that greatly simplified life. In 1966, the ECHO IV (Home Operator Electronic Computing) could control the home air conditioner and TV and keep track of finances, goods, and calendar events. In this way, consumers gradually automated their homes and could control most of their systems.
What is a smart home?
Usually, the technology is incorporated into the home project. It implies that all elements of the smart system – lighting, heating, appliances, computers, video surveillance, etc. – are interconnected, communicate via the Internet, and perform a specific function. You can also implement individual smart devices like “the Ajax Systems” security system or “the Amazon Alexa” voice assistant. In this case, the owner controls the house remotely through a smartphone app or a network of motion sensors. For example, a homeowner can turn on the bathroom light or increase the temperature in the living room by pulling the slider to the right in the mobile app.
People are willing to pay 20% more for comfort, and the smart home market is expected to grow to $140 billion over the next four years. Owners love this technology for its safety, comfort, energy efficiency and convenience.
Modern smart homes are also environmentally friendly and equipped with controllers that help conserve limited natural resources. For example, they can save energy by controlling lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) systems, window coverings, and irrigation.
Today, smart homes are commonplace, although quite expensive: integrating the technology costs tens of thousands of dollars. But what if you can’t afford to implement the entire system in your home but still want to improve your quality of life? You can make some of the devices yourself, especially if you have an engineering degree, enjoy modelling electrical circuits, and are good at programming.
How did a small device open new opportunities?
Electronics have been with me all my adult life. I’ve always liked it, it was easy for me, and I started making my first devices at school. I used to make devices as a hobby in my free time, so when a friend asked me to improve his life, I gladly agreed.
The idea to create an electronic hub for a smart home came spontaneously. My friend needed a device installed in the electrical panel, allowing him to control the lighting in his home. He is also an IT developer and once implemented elements of a smart home system in his apartment. It was made relatively quickly and had a lot of wires, but it worked.
There was only one problem: the lights were constantly turning off or flickering. The reason was that the switches were connected directly to the microcontroller with wires, which made the signal noisy and unstable. Therefore, the microcontroller often misreads the data. In addition to inconvenience in use, this led to constant port burnouts in the microcontroller. For the system to work correctly, this had to be eliminated.
I accepted the challenge and, with my partner, started looking for a way to stabilize the signal, transmit data correctly, and realize the idea.
We had no references to rely on when creating the project – a quick Google didn’t yield any results, and we couldn’t find anything similar with the desired functionality. We assembled our hub “in cubes” like Lego, from common elements on the radio market or AliExpress.
After several stages of testing the device on a breadboard, the final version was on the table. Now it was just a matter of developing and assembling the PCB, slightly adapting it to real-world conditions.
In a month, we made a device that sent a specific command to a lighting point via the Internet, for example, to turn on the light in the bathroom. The feature was hot keys, or special commands that allow you to control the system with a combination or sequence of presses. You can customize them and, for example, turn on the hood by pressing three buttons simultaneously. My friend was pleased: he has been using it for over eight months and says that the light worked so well only in his technology-free childhood.
How can you add smartness to your home?
A “smart” home is an integral organism in which each device is responsible for its function. Signals are sent to the system’s “brain”, i.e., the server, which activates a particular element – a light bulb is activated, and the radio is turned on. In this case, the logic is modelled before the work on implementation in the home begins. As a result, it is difficult to change or add something to it in the future.
Such a hub complements smart home technology and serves as a center for aggregating and transmitting data rather than interpreting it. It can be used however you want, as several additional i2c connectors are on board, allowing you to expand the functionality, including various sensors that support it.
For example, using the hub platform, I developed an air quality sensor that displays a graph of the CO2 level in a room and sends a notification to a computer or smartphone that it needs to be ventilated. In addition, the hub can complement an existing smart home system and work with other devices.
Another advantage of DIY devices for a smart home is the price. For example, we assembled our system in less than a month, supplied high-quality elements, and spent about $50. Instead, manufacturers of commercial smart home systems have many levels of certification and testing, which affects their price and capabilities accordingly.
Of course, our hub is not as powerful, but it is reliable and safe. The voltage in the system is within the permissible limits of 10 volts, and the current does not exceed 100 mA, which will not cause a short circuit and will not harm a child if they break the switch.
How do you make the impossible real?
Developers have a concept called an “eternal device” – when you are constantly improving and supplementing the development. I made the electronic hub universal so that anyone who installs it can find an additional purpose for it after a while.
With programming and electronics knowledge, enthusiasm, perseverance, and a little perfectionism, you can turn anything into a smart object – even your grandmother’s house.
