Introduction & Literature Review of Smart Home Technology

The interest of many people around smart home technology has risen greatly since the last decade and still, many people eagerly want to know about this technology. If we talk about the past years, such machines and their development used to be strictly for the high-value industries and people couldn’t even think of installing them at home. But as it is seen that smart home technology is among them and it is on the verge of becoming embedded deeply in the house of every individual. These days, smart homes are almost similar to our smartphones which is in the hands of every person and they are a source of natural transition in the current climate of technology. Helping an individual to control or set the particular temperature of the house from anywhere in the world is an example that how technology is helping to create ease and convenience for the people. Smart home technology is an environmentally friendly choice taken by different people and making this thing sure that energy is not being wasted like the previous times and it has been done only because of the smart home technology as an individual can turn the light on or off while sitting anywhere whether in the house or outside. (Toschi, G. M., Campos, L. B., & Cugnasca, C. E. 2017)

When this smart home technology was introduced, people were not well aware of its use and they also had difficulty in using it but as time started passing people got to know about its use and now they know about its use properly. Cameras and smart speakers both of them are the few examples of this technology, it gives the convenience of having a look in the house or listening to different voices to the owner if he or she is outside the house and someone sneaks into the house.

Smart home technology is a device that is being installed in the house and then any individual can track different things, monitor them and can also control different appliances just with the help of using a smartphone. All these appliances are connected with the internet and they are being communicated with the app of smart home technology which is being installed in the mob or laptop. It is not necessary to install this technology only for a reason when an individual goes out of the house and to monitor safety. But living in the same house at times it becomes really important to have a check on children that what are they doing or in what kind of activities they are involved in. So, parents can easily check on their kids while staying in their room and even letting their children know. (Cecere, G., Corrocher, N., & Battaglia, R. D. 2015)

Smart home technologies consist of different kind of sensors, monitors, different appliances as well as the devices which are being networked together for the enabling of automation along with the localized and remote controls of the domestic kind of environment. There are controllable home technologies as well that includes hot water systems and the heating which are boilers or radiators. Along with this, windows, curtains, fridges, washing machines and Televisions. Different sensors are present in them which detect the environmental factors which include temperature, motion, light as well as humidity around the devices. This controlling function is provided by the software which is present on the computing devices like tablets or smartphones etc. all these smart house technologies are connected wirelessly by the use of standard communication methods. Their demand is increasing day after day, they are being used professionally as well as in homes.  

Every individual whether having a family or single wants to make sure that their house is safe and home security is one of the biggest draws towards the home automation, on an average people, are investing approximately 47 billion dollars on the home security and it clearly shows that people are conscious towards their home security. According to the different researches which have been done on home security it came out that almost 3 out of 5 citizens of America buy this smart home technology to monitor their house with the help of a smartphone. People want to have peace of mind while on vacation and this can only be done with the home automation. (EC, 2015)

 Making a smart home entrance, how? Arduino or Raspberry Pi?

In the present age. , IOT short form of Internet of things has already entered into a global entered into the golden era. The Internet of things is a concept in actual that helps in the aiming to extend the different benefits of regular internet like constant connectivity, ability to remote control, sharing of different data and much more. It is clearly seen that with every passing day, things are getting connected with the internet. This concept can also be used to manage out the issues concerned with security in a cost-effective way. The system is being introduced to make it connect through the door with the internet due to which access to control systems can be controlled from anywhere in the whole world. In a case, if an owner is not at home and a person visits the house then the picture of the visitor can be taken and sent via mail or twitter to the owner of the house to notify him or her. The door locked can also be accessed with the help of the internet. Making a secure entrance can be done in multiple ways. (Vujović, Vladimir, and Mirjana Maksimović. 2015). One can be using E-keys whereas another way can be to use Raspberry PI by having a camera attached or sensors to open the door via biometric recognition. Arduino can be used to authenticate over the internet about credentials as explained above. Arduino and Raspberry PI are two cards and technological advancements that can be used for this system. Both of them can be programmed to be used for the purpose but there are a few tradeoffs between the two. Both are compact and can easily be placed. The computing speed is pretty decent and makes the process seamless. Raspberry PI is a complete computer with support to major OS whereas Arduino has a limited scope but due to its less functionality it has some other advantages. Few of the advantages of Raspberry PI are:

-          Functionality

-          Robustness

-          Security

-          Networking Whereas Arduino due to less functionality can be used for specialized tasks in creating the entrance for the house.

Arduino is a kind of an open source electronics platform which is based on the easy to use software and hardware. This device has particular boards which are being used to read the certain inputs like light on a sensor, finger on a specific button or any kind of a twitter message and furthers changes it into an output source through the activation of a motor, turning on of the LED and publishing something online. One can also tell about their board that what they have to do just by sending a set of certain instructions to microcontroller on a specific board.

From the past two years, Arduino has been the brain of many thousand different projects starting from the everyday objects and moving towards the complex scientific instruments. Different artists, students and scientists from the world gave their contributions and their efforts have made an incredible amount of the accessible knowledge that can help many novices and experts alike. There are different reasons of using this Arduino device and the reason is that it is inexpensive, simple, cross-platform, open source and extensible software and last plus point is its open source and extensible hardware.