Best Home Automation Technologies & devices

2014-2015

Mikel Berdufi

Universidad de Murcia

Campus Universitario de Espinardo, s/n, 30100 Espinardo, Murcia, Spain

Abstract. This paper will give you an overview about Home automation tech-

nologies used today and some of the best devices that exist now in the market.

Here will also be mentioned some technical details about this devices, what tech-

nologies they use and so on.

1 Introduction

Years ago home automation wasn’t a face of everyday life. Today gradually things

are changing, home automation and technologies that provide this automation are grow-

ing very fast. Now with home automation you are able to stay connected with your

home system every moment whenever and wherever you want. There are a lot of smart

technologies that are helping us with our everyday and Home automation is part of the

smart world. We will explain better what we mean with home automation in the next

section. We will talk also about technologies, standards, devices that use this technolo-

gies and so on.

2 Home Automation

In this section we will introduce home automation as a concept and give some infor-

mation to make your ideas clear about home automation.

2.1 What do we mean with home automation?

Well, from the word we can understand that it is related with the automation of the

home, housework or household activity. The idea is to have a centralized control system

for almost all devices you have and use in your home, for example:

─ Lighting

─ Appliances

─ Security locks of gates and doors

So there is a system that integrates electrical devices in a house with each other.

Using this concept you will be able to gain control on some of domestic activities

like:

─ home entertainment systems

─ houseplant

─ yard watering

─ pet feeding

─ changing the ambiance "scenes" for different events (such as dinners or parties)

─ use of domestic robots.

All this devices are connected with each other through HOME NETWORK or home

area network (HAN) that is a local area network with the purpose to facilitate com-

munication among digital devices present inside, or within the close vicinity of a

home. As a transmission media can be used:

─ Wireless

─ Structured cabling

─ Existing home wiring

There are some standards technologies defined worldwide to provide communica-

tion of devices through this network. We will talk in the next section about this tech-

nologies.

But what is more interesting is that you can control the system everywhere and any-

where, meaning that HAN allows you to be connected to the system through

smartphone or tablet. This makes the system very powerful.

2.2 Futures of Home Automation

As we mentioned above home automation is being used more and more in our days.

It make sour life easier. Here we will mention some of the advantages of using a

home automation system.

Some Advantages of using a home automation system:

─ Lighting (Save energy and money dimming or turning off lights while you are away)

─ Security (Monitor your home while you are away from your smartphone or tablet)

─ Garage (control your garage door from any location)

─ Thermostat (Control your thermostat while away to ensure heating & cooling cost

stay low)

─ Locks (Monitor and control locks on every exterior door of your home)

In other words Home automation provides the luxury of keeping tabs on your home

at all times.

3 Technologies

In this section we will mention some of the most important and actual technologies

related to Home Automation. We will be focused more on communication protocols

and will give a comparison table between some of this protocols. We will mention also

some of the alliances that are developing and standardizing technologies related to

Home automation.

3.1 Some alliances developing and standardizing technologies

HomePlug :

HomePlug is the family name for various power line communications specifications

that support networking over existing home electrical wiring. Several specifications

exist under the HomePlug moniker, with each offering unique performance capabilities

and coexistence or compatibility with other HomePlug specifications. The HomePlug

Powerline Alliance was formed to develop standards and technology for enabling de-

vices to communicate with each other, and the Internet, over existing home electrical

wiring. One of the greatest technical challenges was finding a way to reduce sensitivity

to the electrical noise that is inevitably present on power lines. Whenever an appliance

is turned on or off, it creates electrical noise that can interfere with data transfer through

the wiring. Noise sensitivity was problematic in early powerline technology, though

later versions have solved this problem.

There are some version of this technology:

HomePlug 1.0

─ First introduced in June, 2001

─ Provides a data rate of 14 Mbit/s

─ Has been replaced by HomePlug AV

HomePlug AV

─ Was introduced in August 2005

─ Provides sufficient bandwidth for applications such as HDTV and VoIP.

─ Offers a peak data rate of 200 Mbs at the physical layer

─ About 80 Mbs at the MAC layer.

HomePlug AV2

─ Was introduced in January 2012

─ is interoperable with HomePlug AV and HomePlug GreenPHY devices

─ offers gigabit-class PHY-rate

─ first generation are generally considered to be 20% faster than HomePlug AV

HomePlug Green PHY

─ Is a subset of HomePlug AV that is intended for use in the smart grid

─ Has peak rates of 10 Mbit/s

─ Is designed to go into smart meters and smaller appliances

─ Uses up to 75% less energy than AV.

─

HomePlug Access BPL

─ Refers to a to-the-home broadband access technology.

─ Subsequently contributed and merged into the IEEE 1901 standard

HomePNA Alliance.

HomePNA is another alliance or an industry group that promotes standards for using

existing phone lines and jacks to interconnect computers within a home. The HPNA's

HomePNA standard is one of several leading technologies for home network.

HomePNA creates industry specifications which it then standardizes under the Interna-

tional Telecommunication Union (ITU) standards body. HomePNA also promotes the

technology, tests, and certifies member products as HomePNA compliant.

There are some versions:

HomePNA 1.0 – developed in 1990

HomePNA 2.0

HomePNA 3.0-developed in 2005

HomePNA 3.1-developed in 2007

Some of the advantages of the last version of this technology are:

─ You can use you actual home wiring system, without building a new home wiring

─ HomePNA operates at different frequencies on the same coax or phone wires

─ Some products offer data rates up to 320 Mbit/s

─ Maximum of 64 devices can be connected.

─ Uses standard Ethernet drivers

─ The required hardware is not expensive.

Home Grid Forum.

HomeGrid Forum (HGF) is an industry alliance that brings together the world’s best

in technology innovators, silicon vendors, system manufacturers and service providers

to promote G.hn,(gigabit home network) the globally recognized gigabit home net-

working technology based on ITU-T standards.

G.hn is the technology behind the fastest and cleanest home networking service plat-

form available today – it works over any wire in the home – and out performs any

competing home network technology.

Based on a common vision of migrating the market to G.hn technology, HomeGrid

Forum (HGF) merged with the HomePNA Alliance in May 2013, forming an industry

alliance of over 70 members including some of the world’s largest Service Providers,

system manufacturers, and silicon companies

ZigBee.

ZigBee is the Global Wireless Language Connecting Dramatically Different Devices

to Work Together and Enhance Everyday Life.The purpose of ZigBee is to create a

Much Needed Global Wireless language. ZigBee gives a Voice to the myriad of

everyday devices that surround us as we go about our daily lives.

These devices are overlooked in an IT centric world:

─ Light switches, thermostats, electricity meters

─ More complex sensor devices found abundantly in the

commercial building and industrial automation worlds.

The goal of the ZigBee Alliance is to provide the consumer with ultimate flexibility,

mobility, and ease of use by building wireless intelligence and capabilities into

everyday devices.

There are 2 Available Public Application Profiles:

–ZigBee Smart Energy

–ZigBee Home Automation

And of course we are interested in ZigBee Home Automation as this article is focused

in Home automation.

ZigBee Home Automation is the industry leading global standard helping to create

smarter homes that enhance the comfort, convenience, security and energy manage-

ment for the consumer.It is the technology of choice for world-leading service provid-

ers, installers and retailers.The latest version of ZigBee Home Automation standard,

which is fully interoperable with previous versions, adds several important new fea-

tures that improve the battery life for security sensors to over seven years, standardize

pairing of devices and simplify installation and maintenance for consumers and cus-

tom installers alike. These features have a significant impact on operational and de-

vice costs to service providers and quality of service to consumers.

All ZigBee Home Automation products are ZigBee Certified to perform regardless

of manufacturer, allowing anyone to purchase with confidence. ZigBee Home Au-

tomation delivers a standard that can make every home a smarter, safer and more

energy efficient environment for consumers and families.

Some futures of this technology are shown in the image below:

Fig. 1.

3.2 Home automation most popular protocols

Here in this section we will describe some of the most popular communication

protocols used by different devices for home automation.At the end of the section you

will find a comparison table of this protocols.You can find a full list of this protocols

in this site : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automation_protocols

Some of the most popular protocols used in home automation are :

C-Bus (protocol) characteristics:

─ Based on a seven layer OSI model

─ The maximum length of cable used on a C-Bus network is 1000 meters.

─ Used in the control of home automation systems, as well as commercial building

lighting control systems

─ Uses a dedicated low-voltage cable or two-way wireless network to carry command

and control signals.

─ It is used in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the Middle East, Russia, USA, South

Africa, the UK and other parts of Europe including Greece and Romania.

─ Using one of Clipsal's C-Bus interface modules (PCI for RS232 or USB and CNI for

Ethernet TCP/IP), you can interact with other home automation systems, or with

applications on devices like Android, iPad or iPhone.

EnOcean.

─ Is an energy harvesting (batteryless) wireless technology used primarily in building

automation systems.

─ is based on the energetically efficient exploitation of slight mechanical motion and

other potentials from the environment, such as indoor light and temperature differ-

ences, using the principles of energy harvesting.

─ EnOcean-based products (such as sensors and light switches) perform without bat-

teries and are engineered to operate maintenance-free.

─ Is also applied to other applications in industry, transportation, logistics and smart

homes.

─ Was ratified as the international standard ISO/IEC 14543-3-10

─ Covers the OSI layers 1-3 which are the physical, data link and networking layers.

─ The data can be transmitted wirelessly over a distance of up to 300 meters.

─ Wireless data packets are relatively small (14 bytes long and are transmitted at 125

kbit/s).

Insteon.

─ Enables light switches, lights, thermostats, motion sensors, and other devices to in-

teroperate through power lines, radio frequency (RF) communications, or both Top

devices and their Technical Details.

─ Every message received by an Insteon compatible device undergoes error detection

and correction and is then repeated.

─ It employs a dual-mesh networking topology

─ All devices are peers and each device autonomously transmits, receives, and repeats

messages.

─ Every Insteon device has its own unique identifier code, similar to a MAC address.

─ Data rate Sustained average case: 180 bit/s.

─ memory requirements :

RAM: 80 bytes

ROM: 3 kilobytes

KNX (standard).

─ OSI-based network communications protocol for intelligent buildings.

─ KNX defines several physical communication media:

Twisted pair wiring (inherited from the BatiBUS and EIB Instabus standards)

Powerline networking (inherited from EIB and EHS - similar to that used by X10)

Radio (KNX-RF)

Infrared

Ethernet (also known as EIBnet/IP or KNXnet/IP)

─ is designed to be independent of any particular hardware platform.

─ is approved as an open standard

─ The most common form of installation is over twisted pair medium.

─ The KNX Association member companies have more than 7000 KNX certified prod-

uct in their catalogues.

Universal power line bus

─ is a protocol for communication among devices used for home automation.

─ It uses power line wiring for signaling and control.

─ was developed and released in 1999

─ UPB has an improved transmission rate and higher reliability.

─ Household electrical wiring such as Romex or BX is used to send digital data be-

tween UPB devices.

─ While transmitting, one UPB Pulse is generated each half-cycle of the 60 Hz AC

electrical power cycle.

─ The position of each UPB Pulse determines its value as either 0, 1, 2, or 3 and this

method of encoding data is called Pulse-position modulation (PPM).

─ UPB communication has a raw speed of 240 bits per second.

X-10.

─ It primarily uses power line wiring for signaling and control.

─ Signals involve brief radio frequency bursts representing digital information.

─ was developed in 1975 by Pico Electronics of Glenrothes, Scotland,

─ X10 remains popular in the home environment with millions of units in use world-

wide, and inexpensive availability of new components.

─ X10 control protocol consist of a four bit house code

─ Inexpensive X10 devices only receive commands and do not acknowledge their sta-

tus to the rest of the network.

─ Solid-state switches used in X10 controls pass a very small leakage current.

─ One problem with X10 is excessive attenuation of signals between the two live con-

ductors in the 3-wire 120/240 volt system used in typical North American.

─ X10 signals can only be transmitted one command at a time.

─ The X10 protocol is slow.

This are the most popular protocols used today and below is a comparison table between

the protocol and technologies we have mentioned.

Fig. 2.

4 Best devices

We mentioned a lot of alliances that are working on developing technologies and

devices that run with their technologies. There are a lot of big companies behind this

alliances that help them in this process. Now a days there is a huge number of devices

on the market. We will mention some of the best devices that can be used to build the

smartest home in the world. We will be focused in this categories of devices:

─ Air Conditioner

─ Home Lock

─ Video Monitor

─ Thermostat

─ Humidity Monitor

─ Sensor System

4.1 Best Smart Home System

Wink Smart Home Hub

Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (aka Bluetooth

Smart or Bluetooth 4.0), ZigBee, Z-Wave, Lu-

tron's Clear Connect – Home Depot's Wink

Hub supplies nearly every smart home wireless

connection standard over which the dozens of Wink smart home devices operate.

But unlike other hub-based smart home ecosystems, many Home Depot/Wink de-

vices (those with a blue labels on their retail packaging) don't require the hub, such

as the Aros air conditioner. Best of all, if you buy two Wink-compatible gadgets at

Home Depot before Labor Day, the Hub is just 99 cents.

4.2 Best Smart Home Lock

Kwikset Kevo

A mere touch of your finger unlocks or locks

this otherwise normal-looking front door bolt

lock. You can assign virtual keys permanently

or temporarily, monitor ins and outs remotely

and receive activity alerts via the Kevo app.

Kevo's quotidian aesthetics are actually part of

its security function – unlike other, perhaps admittedly smarter, locks, nefarious folks

will have no clue to Kevo's intelligence. And in case of a technical snafu, Kevo can be

opened with a reliable regular key. Kevo also is due to be incorporated into both the

Home Depot/Wink and Staples Connect ecosystems. By utilizing either Zigbee or Z-

Wave RF protocols that integrate with security or home automation systems supporting

these two RF protocols.

4.3 Best Video Monitor

Dropcam Pro

Your home just got an extra pair of eyes: the $199

Dropcam Pro surveillance takes continuous 720p

video, and features two-way audio, sharp night vision

and a powerful digital zoom, letting you see up close

what may be lurking in your living room. The Pro

model upgrades to a glass lens from plastic in the

original model, and adds a motion sensor to the body. Go online or into the companion app to

take a look at your home through Dropcam Pro whenever you want, and set alerts for peculiar

motions and sounds. Dropcam Pro is the device you to get for those who don’t really want to

leave home. Dropcam is essentially betting on Z-Wave and ZigBee making way for Bluetooth

LE to be the future protocol of choice for the connected home.

4.4 Best Thermostat

Nest Learning

Wasting money on unused air-conditioning or

heating no longer needs to be a concern with the

Nest Learning Thermostat. This handy little de-

vice learns your schedule in about a week and

programs itself to control your home's internal

temperature. Or, you can manually adjust things

from your smartphone. The folks at Nest insist

that 4 out of 5 people can install this smart de-

vice in 30 minutes or less, but you can get a pro-

fessional to do it for you. The company also

claims their thermostat will save you up to 20

percent on your bills.

Some technical details about this device are shown to the figure below:

Fig. 3.

4.5 Best Sensor System

Sense Mother

Sense Mother is the quirkiest way to keep

track of everything in your home. The Russian

doll-like hub lovingly called Mother collects in-

formation from little cookies that you can place

anywhere, even on your body. Choose an app

from Sense Mother’s app collection and assign

actions to cookies to start tracking your life: put

a cookie in your pocket for a makeshift pedom-

eter, put one on your door to receive notifica-

tions when someone enters or leaves your home, and much more. Get a bird’s eye view

of your data using Sense board to check all of the activity from your cookies.

Technical details:

─ Mother, from Sen.se,is 6.3 inches tall and weighs one pound

─ Mother connects to your router or internet box through an Ethernet cable

─ Motion Cookies communicate with Mother using a proprietary radio standard

developed by Sen.se on the 915 MHz frequency band (in North America) 8

68MHz (in europe).

─ Motion Cookies are powered by CR2016 button cells, and they’re replaceable

5 Conclusion

As we see the most used technology by devices in our days is ZigBee.Zigbee is very

powerful in the market because there are a lot of big companies that are supporting the

development of this technologies and the development of Zigbee certified devices. At

the end we can say that technology is helping us more and more and Home automation

is going to be more popular than it is in our days.

6 References

1. Home-automation-benefits:

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/06/home-

automation-benefits-infographic/

2. Home-automation-systems-review http://home-automation-

systems-review.toptenreviews.com/a-guide-to-

home-automation-protocols.html

3. Digitaltrends :

http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/zigbee-vs-

zwave-vs-insteon-home-automation-protocols-

explained/

4. Home-automation-an-overview :

http://www.slideshare.net/SmartAutomation/smart-

home-automation-an-overview-27449374

5. Best-smart-home

gadgets:http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-smart-

home-gadgets,review-2014.html

6. NEST_Learning_Themostat brochure :

http://www.revisionheat.com/pdfs/NEST_Learning_T

hemostat_brochure.pdf