Proceedings of 2015 3rd International Conference on Advances in Electrical Engineering

17-19 December, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Microcontroller Based Home Automation System

Using Bluetooth, GSM, Wi-Fi and DTMF
Neaz Md. Morshed, G.M. Muid-Ur-Rahman, Md. Rezaul Karim and Hasan U. Zaman
Department of ECE, North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
tamim70_nsu@yahoo.com, muidrahman@yahoo.com,
rezasohan@gmail.com, hasan.zaman@northsouth.edu

Abstract—Automation is a system that plays a significant role management, audio and video entertainment. Smart home
in the ubiquitous economics. Engineers combat to consolidate based home automation has huge demand in market now-a-
automated devices with functional instruments to make days. Smart phone based home automation apps are already
complicated systems for a fast expanding range of applications running successfully in global market. Within 2020 year,
and human activities. This paper represents a low cost, flexible
home automation will run as expectations in Bangladesh as
and standalone home automation system. We can control home
appliances from outdoor also from indoor locations. We have well as in whole world. Now we can say that, user’s awareness
used a PIR (Passive Infrared Sensor) in this system that detects and attraction for new technology are increasing the growth of
an intruder. All Electrical loads are automated in this system. home automation in North America, Europe and Asia pacific
There is also an internet module that is used to notify the status zone.
of home appliances using Twitter. The advantage of the internet Research for home automation will increase revenue and
module is that the home appliances can be controlled from global development within 2015-2020. Advantages of home
anywhere in the world. The systems also use the DTMF (Dual- automation will explore soon and the effect of it will develop
Tone Multi-Frequency) technology for the calling system, so the the growth of society. So, this project will create a good
home appliances can be controlled by calling and pressing
opportunity at south Asian market.
buttons of mobile devices. Using this system, physically weak
people can control home appliances from anywhere. This system
can be implemented in houses, offices, hospitals, industries, or
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
even in universities. The user interface is kept simple, so users
from beginner to advanced level internet users can use the system Our designed home automation system is a flexible system
without problem. that can control and make a communion between nearly all
load appliances of the house. All appliances can control from
Keywords—microcontroller; gsm modem; PIR sensor; indoor also outdoor from any places. Our automated home can
internet module
be called a smart home. If one forgets to switch off the lights
or other appliances while going out, it allows you to turn off
I. INTRODUCTION the appliance with your cell phone. By using twitter, you can
Just conceive that, how beneficial it will to be able switch get status of your home and also can control your home power
on our air condition half hour before we reach our home on devices. This is a simple automation system which contains
summer time. When we leave our home for some work remote mobile host controller and several home appliances.
without realizing that some appliances such as fans, air We have five features in this project. We implement home
conditioners, and lights are on; then by using our mobile automation using Bluetooth, GSM-SMS, GSM-DTMF, PIR
phone or internet, we are able to turn off power to those (passive infrared sensor), and an internet module for Twitter.
devices. It will be even more useful if the system detects At first, we set up Bluetooth then GSM-SMS then GSM-
unauthorized movement in the house and alerts us or sends DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency) then PIR and the last
messages on our mobile phones or we can know the status of part is the internet module using twitter.
our house anytime by Twitter. These are some features of The main features of this system are:
home automation and there is no end to its application.  Control through android mobiles.
Actually, filthy automation systems are now being developed  Control by SMS where device is capable of
that can maintain an invoice of household items. recognizing the user.
The automation market is mainly guided by flourishing need  Through GSM modem, appliances can be controlled
for efficient solutions in various household applications such by DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency) tone. All
as lighting, safety and security and energy legislation. The devices can be controlled using phone calls.
development of smart cities and high-tech homes in the North  The user can control appliances through Twitter.
America and Middle East region is make an impression about  Another feature is detecting humans or intruders by
the growth of overall home automation market. The home using motion detector or PIR sensor.
automation market is initially driven by increasing the While the development of the first three features of this
necessity of effective solutions in several household system has been completed, the last two features are still
applications such as lighting, safety and security, energy under development.

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 Proceedings of 2015 3rd International Conference on Advances in Electrical Engineering
17-19 December, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh

II. METHODOLOGY message service) technology is a technology that can make all
We have combined the system with input processing and communication system in short and it can be used to control
output that are shown in Fig. 1. household appliances from long distance. Remotely control
system allows the home owner to control the home appliances
from mobile phone number set by commands (A1B1, A0B0,
A1B0 and A0B1) in the form of SMS messages and receiving
the appliances that is actually the GSM number for knowing
the status as well. If someone sends a message on GSM
number like “A1B1” then all lights will be on for this message
and if someone send a message like “A0B0” then all lights
will be off by this sequence we can control all load
connections such as fans, AC, TV, refrigerator etc. So it’s a
system that if someone can’t reach on home on the right time
so that he/she can control all appliances from anywhere. The
proposed system makes use of wireless control hence can be
effectively used in systems were unwired connections are
desired. The system uses the user's mobile handset for control
and therefore the system is more adaptable and also providing
ubiquitous access for appliance control.
Fig. 1. Block diagram of home automation system Actually using the GSM module for the SMS system is the
simplest part of the project. We set the GSM module over the
Arduino Uno microcontroller. Inside the GSM module we put
A. Bluetooth a necessary SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) card.
Our first work is using Bluetooth. To create the Bluetooth
connection, we needed one Bluetooth device, one Arduino
Uno, two input one channel relay shield, one android app to
control the system and two bulbs to be able to demonstrate
how the system works. Now we describe how the whole
system was combined by us. The Bluetooth device has 4 pins,
which are Vcc, ground, Rx, and Tx. Rx is the receiver and Tx
is the transmitter. We connected Bluetooth Rx, Tx with
Arduino Uno Rx, Tx.

(a) (b)
Fig.3. GSM based SMS and calling system
Fig. 2. Pictorial view of Bluetooth setup. C. GSM-calling
(a) Bluetooth pin (b) Full Bluetooth setup.
For this feature, we use a DTMF (Dual-tone Multi
Bluetooth device has two more pins. Ground is connected Frequency) module. The DTMF module is a very old device.
with Arduino’s ground and Vcc is connected with Vcc. Now We have found this device after a long search.
we describe how the two relay shields were combined. There DTMF is what a conventional wired phone sends when you
are also 4 pins: ground, In1, In2, Vcc. In 1 is input 1 which press its buttons to make a call, or navigate voice mail or
goes to signal and In2 is for second load. Input power 220V is corporate phone systems. It works by sending two tones for
incoming from the other side. each button, one tone for each column of buttons, another tone
for each row. The maximum guaranteed bandwidth extends
B. GSM-SMS from about 300 Hz to 3.5 kHz. DTMF is device that was not
The system allows household appliance control using cell made for data transfer; it is designed for control the signals
phone through global system for mobile communication that generate from one device to another devices. Just pressing
(GSM) technology. Cellular communications is a dynamic the phone buttons we can easily control our home appliances
solution for such remote controlling activities. SMS (short from anywhere. For this we have to stuck the DTMF shield on

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17-19 December, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh

GSM module and connect with Arduino Uno. In GSM E. Internet Module (For Twitter-Based Home Automation)
modules is a DTMF decoder included. The DTMF tones are
controlled by Arduino AT commands. This feature is done
successfully from our five features of this project.

Fig. 4. DTMF device

D. PIR sensor
We use a passive infrared (PIR) sensor, which is an
electronic sensor that detects infrared (IR) light radiating from
objects in its field of view. It’s also a security system at our Fig. 6. Block diagram of twitter connection
home that is controlled by one input and two channel relay
shield. If someone enter in home, automatically all appliances A Smart home is not a new term for science society, it is
will be on for the infrared ray of human. It’s also work for been used from decades. For the last few decades automation
knowing the status of load connections in our home. The main system are only for used in local area but by using internet we
work of PIR is that when home owner enter home, all can control our load connections from anywhere and any
appliances automatically turned on and when they leave, it’s places that we want. It’s a new system that we are proposed
automatically goes on turned off. for home automation system. Just guess we are out of our
PIR sensors sophisticated sensor that many of the other country from our own country and need to be know the status
sensors, because there are lots of variables that affect the of our home, so just using a twitter account we can control our
sensor input and output. home appliances from anywhere of world. For this system we
The PIR sensor itself has two slots in it; each slot is made of have to make an account on Thingspeak website.
a special material that is sensitive to IR. When the sensor is "ThingSpeak” is an open source Internet of Things
idle, both slots detect the same amount of IR, the ambient (IOT) website and API to store and reclaim data from things
amount radiated from the room or walls or outdoors. When the using the HTTP protocol over the Internet or via a Local Area
warm body leaves the sensing area, the reverse happens, Network. ThingSpeak enables the creation of sensor logging
whereby the sensor generates a negative differential change. applications, location tracking applications, and a social
These change pulses are what is detected. network of things with status updates [8].
The IR sensor itself is housed in a hermetically sealed metal Twitter is website or social website that does not get any
can to improve noise/temperature/humidity immunity. There is HTTP link from any server. So for that reason we used an IOT
a window made of IR-transmissive material (typically coated platform that is actually a cloud service. We also used
silicon since that is very easy to come by) that protects the ESP8266 WIFI module that is connected on our home
sensing element. Behind the window are the two balanced appliances. This device always searching that cloud server and
sensors. connect with that server by using internet. So from twitter we
have to generate some types of trigger like “#thingspeak
#bulb1on” or “#thingspeak #bulb2off” and this type of trigger
go on page, from that page Thingspeak application collect the
entire trigger and generate on ESP8266 module. It’s a full
security system home automation system because of personal
twitter account and Thingspeak personal account need too.
So Home automation using Cloud computing that has also
been proposed by where users were able to control various
lights and appliances within their home. All above mentioned
systems has made tremendous contributions in home
automation system. However, a PC is used as a server that
increases the cost and power consumption while others require
web page hosting that adds up the extra cost.
Fig. 5. Full circuit connection with PIR sensor.

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17-19 December, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh

system that are also helpful for security and privacy. We are
successfully done with our hardware implementation of the
project. All five features are working as expected.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper describes the design and implementation of a
home automation system using various modern
communication technologies. The system also provides a
security system. The project uses Android and Arduino
platforms, both of which are FOSS (Free Open Source
Fig. 7. The Internet Module
Software). Therefore the overall implementation cost and
affordability is very inexpensive.
We have implemented a Twitter based home automation
system with the help of an internet module (shown in Fig. 6). ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The internet module has a private twitter account, by which
we can control our home appliances from anywhere and This project has been done as a part of an undergraduate
Capstone Design course in the Department of Electrical and
anyplace Fig. 7 shows the hardware connection for
implementing the Twitter-base home automation system. Computer Engineering in North South University, Dhaka,
Bangladesh. We would like to thank our advisor Dr. Hasan Uz
Zaman who has always given us good suggestions in the
technical side and encouragement in all aspects.

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Fig. 8. Twitter connection board
[5] R. Piyare and M. Tazil, "Bluetooth Based Home Automation System
Using Cell phone," in IEEE 15th International Symposium on Consumer
We use the thingspeak website to complete the Twitter- Electronics, Singapore 2011, pp. 192 - 195.
based control. From Twitter, we tweet some words like, [6] Wikipedia (2009).Home Automation. From
“#thingspeak #bulb1on or #thingspeak #bulb2off”. For this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation. Retrieved on 7/30/200
tweet, a URL massage goes on thingspeak and by using that Olalekan, O. M. (October, 2009). Individual control Home automation
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[8] iobridge/thingspeak, “GitHub” from this URL link
III. RESULTS https://github.com/iobridge/thingspeak/blob/master/README.textile
All the implemented five features of this project are
functionally working. This project includes Twitter based
control and PIR sensor based detection of home intrusion that
is actually the main part of security and privacy mechanisms.
Others are Bluetooth system, GSM-SMS and GSM-calling

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