Smart Home Monitoring using Android and Wireless Sensors

Abstract

Common electrical hazards that occur at home are usually associated with the usage of faulty home appliances and electrical distribution. Circuit breakers are normally used to protect overloading at residential homes. We envisage that by monitoring continuously the usage characteristics of electrical power at every power point in real time could be the best method for protection. Presently, wireless sensor network (WSN) has been used in home monitoring to optimally manage the ‘well-being’ of power distribution in home in order to minimize hazards caused by electrical faults. This technique incidentally helps controlling the tariff by maintaining the power usage optimally. It has also been found that not much study has yet been made towards the use of WSN for monitoring electrical power and the consequent hazards with a view to ensure the welfare of residents at home. Based on this idea, we have developed a real time WSN based Electrical Hazard monitoring system that also uses android mobile application environment. The android based smart home monitoring, christened as ABASH system the details of which we present in this paper, detects the threshold violation in electrical parameters and produces an appropriate alert signal for home owners to enable them to take proper remedial actions depending on the situation, much before the circuit breaker operates. The proposed system has been validated specifically for the Brunei Electric standard as a case study. The details are provided in the paper.