INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONTROL, AUTOMATION AND SYSTEMS

VOL.3 NO.3
ISSN 2165-8277 (Print) ISSN 2165-8285 (Online)
http://www.researchpub.org/journal/jac/jac.html

JULY 2014

Design and Implementation of a Reliable

Wireless Real-Time Home Automation System
Based on Arduino Uno Single-Board
Microcontroller
Bader M. O. Al-thobaiti, Iman I. M. Abosolaiman, Mahdi H. M. Alzahrani, Sami H. A. Almalki,
Mohamed S. Soliman*

It is will know that the concept of smart home has focused the
attention of researchers, lifestyle practitioners, and the
consumers to be directed forward the usage of the recent
technology. Considerable efforts have been made to the
development of remote control systems for home automation.
The earlier work of such systems are mainly based on the use of
telephone line, such as a phone-based system for home
automation using a hardware-based remote controller [2],[3]
based on a personal computer approach [4]. These kinds of
systems which make use of the telephone as the remote control
input device have no way to be connected through any user
interface. The proliferation of telecommunications technology
has made most of recent home automation scenarios focus on
using wireless communication to communicate the home
appliances. Shepherd in [5] has introduced the idea of using
Bluetooth wireless technology as a cable replacement that
exploited the wireless interconnectivity which can be
implemented using radio home automation system method.
However, he gave no design and implementation details in his
work. Sriskanthan et. al. in [6] have developed an automated
system based on Bluetooth wireless technology which allows
the user to monitor and control different appliances that are
connected over a Bluetooth network based on a mobile host
controller. Alkar et. al. in [7] have introduced an internet based
wireless home automated system for multi-functional devices.
Although the system has a low cost and flexible wireless
solution to the home automation, there are still some limitations
related to the wireless communication range and power failure.
Jawarkar et. al. in [8] have proposed a remote monitoring
through mobile phone involving the use of spoken commands.
These spoken commands are generated and sent in the form of
text SMS to the control system via a microcontroller that
designed on the basis of SMS where a decision of a particular
task can be taken place. El-Medany et. al. in [9] proposed a
GSM-based remote sensing for controlling system based on
using FPGA. This system has worked as a remote sensing for
the electrical appliances at home to check whether it is on or off
and in the same time allowed the user to control the electrical

AbstractThis
paper
presents
design
and
implementation concepts for a wireless real-time home
automation system based on Arduino Uno microcontroller
as central controllers. The proposed system has two
operational modes. The first one is denoted as a
manuallyautomated mode in which the user can monitor
and control the home appliances from anywhere over the
world using the cellular phone through Wi-Fi
communication technology. The second one is referred to a
self- automated mode that makes the controllers to be
capable of monitoring and controlling different appliances
in the home automatically in response to the signals comes
from the related sensors. To support the usefulness of the
proposed technique, a hardware implementation with
Matlab-GUI platform for the proposed system is carried
out and the reliability of the system is introduced. The
proposed system is shown to be a simple, cost effective and
flexible that making it a suitable and a good candidate for
the smart home future.
Keywords Home automation, Arduino Uno, Wi-Fi,
Matlab-GUI platform, Maunally-automated, Self-automated

I. INTRODUCTION
ecently, mans work and life are increasingly tight with the
rapid growth in communications and information
technology. The informationized society has changed
human beings way of life as well as challenged the traditional
residence. Followed by the rapid economic expansion, living
standard keeps raising up day by day that people have a higher
requirement for dwelling functions. The intellectualized society
brings diversified information where safe, economic,
comfortable and convenient life has become the ideal for every
modern family [1].

The authors are with the department of Electrical Engineering,

Taif University, Taif 21974, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
*Correspondence to Mohamed S. Soliman
(e-mail: soliman.comm.tu.ksa@gmail.com).

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONTROL, AUTOMATION AND SYSTEMS

VOL.3 NO.3
ISSN 2165-8277 (Print) ISSN 2165-8285 (Online)
http://www.researchpub.org/journal/jac/jac.html

appliances at home based on SMS technique. It also works as

automatic and immediate reporting to the user in case of
emergency for home security. Zhang et.al. in [10] showed that a
home automation system based on electric power
communication (PLC) that uses household electric wire for
communication and internet control with logging facilities.
Although this system procedure overcome the shortcomings of
communications techniques, but still need some improvement.
System that uses a GSM-Bluetooth based controller and remote
monitoring system is proposed in [11]. This system is scalable
and permitted any number of different appliances to be added
with no major changes in its core. But this system is not
efficient in some situations that required strong real-time
applications. Carl et.al. in [12] has proposed a cost effective and
flexible automation system that implemented through FPGA
controller and mobile phone Bluetooth network. This method
provides a parallel implementation of hardware results using
fast algorithm execution. A WiFi based automation system is
also implemented in [13] where a microcontroller and WiFi
technology for appliances remote control have been used. They
showed that from point of view of the scalability and flexibility
are better than those methods using the commercially available
home automation systems.

JULY 2014

the home appliances through cellular phone using Wi-Fi

communication. It communicates with the Arduino Uno
microcontroller board through USB data transfer cable. A
number of appliances and sensors are connected to ports of the
microcontroller board. The home Appliances can be monitored
and accessed remotely by user cellular phone.

Fig. 1. Proposed home automation system architecture.

Based on all the preceding materials, a design concept for a

real-time home automation system using Arduino Uno
microcontroller with Matlab-GUI are proposed in this work.
The proposed Arduino Uno controller introduced in this work
provides a simple implementation at the system as compared to
the other types of controllers in the literature. This system has
two operational modes; the first one of them is based on a
cellular phone while the second one is considered a
self-automated process. To support our claim, a hardware
implementation for the proposed system is developed to verify
its reliability and limitations.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: section 2
describes the design aspects of the proposed home automation
system. The system hardware implementation and its results are
presented in section 3. Finally, the conclusions of this paper are
reported in section 4.
II. SYSTEM DESIGN
The core of the home automation system consists of two main
hardware components: the PC home server and the Arduino
uno microcontroller board which is flexible, inexpensive, offers
a variety of digital and analog inputs, serial interface and digital
and PWM outputs. It is easy to use, connects to computer via
USB and communicates using standard serial protocol, runs in
standalone mode and as interface connected to PC computers.
Also, it comes with free authoring software. It is an
open-source project, software/hardware is extremely accessible
and very flexible to be customized and extended [14]. The
architecture of the system developed is shown in figure 1. A PC
home server hosts the Matlab-GUI platform management and
Arduino uno control algorithm that enables the user to access

(a)

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONTROL, AUTOMATION AND SYSTEMS

VOL.3 NO.3
ISSN 2165-8277 (Print) ISSN 2165-8285 (Online)
http://www.researchpub.org/journal/jac/jac.html

JULY 2014

(b)
Fig. 2 Proposed home automation process.
a. Manually-automated Mode,
b. Self-automated Mode (i,e temperature control)

In this proposal, two operating modes are designed. The first

one is a manuallyautomated mode in which the appliance is
monitored and accessed manually using the cellular phone. The
proposed flow chart of this process is shown in figure 2.a. In
this case, the appliances detection status is performed by the
Arduino Uno. The user can select the required appliances using
Matlab-GUI button. The selected appliances can be ON/OFF
according to the suitable decision.
The other mode is a self-automated mode. In this case the
microcontroller accesses the appliance automatically without
returning back to the user decision. The user can monitor the
action only. Figure 2.b illustrates the process of temperature
self-automated control system as an example of this operating
mode.
Fig. 3. Proposed manually-automated mode system.

III. HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION

To verify the correct operation and limitation of the designed
system, a hardware implementation is developed to model the
proposed system in its two different modes manuallyautomated and self-automated modes.

2. Self-automated system:
In case of the self-automated mode, the appliances are
automatically controlled. Two systems are implemented for
this case one is temperature control and monitoring system and
the other is the light/dark sensing system.

1. Manually-automated system:
The appliances in home are remotely controlled using cellular
telephone with Matlab-GUI platform. The designed
Matlab-GUI platform can control four appliances individually
or all of them at same time by pressing ON/OFF buttons as
shown in figure 3.

In temperature control system, TMP36 temperature sensor is

used to measure the ambient temperature. The temperature is
adjusted to be less than 30oC.If the temperature exceeds 30oC,
microcontroller will turn on the fan to reduce the temperature as
shown in figure4.
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONTROL, AUTOMATION AND SYSTEMS

VOL.3 NO.3
ISSN 2165-8277 (Print) ISSN 2165-8285 (Online)
http://www.researchpub.org/journal/jac/jac.html

JULY 2014

In automatic light control system, Light Dependent Resistor

(LDR) sensor is used to detect light/dark condition. In dark
state the home light will turn on automatically as indicated by
the LED shown in figure5, otherwise it will turn off. This
application is important for saving the energy.

Fig. 5. Light self-automated system.

(a)
a. temperature is less than 30oC,
b. temperature is greater than 30oC

IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a design concept for a wireless real-time home
automation system based on Arduino Uno microcontroller as
central controller has been obtained. The proposed technique
provided that the automated system has two operational modes,
where the first mode used a manually-automated mode
technique in which users can monitor and control their home
appliances from anywhere over the world using cellular phone
through Wi-Fi communication technology. The second mode
was a self- automated mode that made the Arduino Uno
controller capable of monitoring and controlling different
appliances in the home automatically in response to any signals
came from related sensors. A hardware implementation of the
system was carried out to verify the reliability of the system.
The implemented system was a simple, low cost and flexible
that can be expanded and scaled up. A future improvement can

(b)
Fig. 4. Temperature self-automated system.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONTROL, AUTOMATION AND SYSTEMS

VOL.3 NO.3
ISSN 2165-8277 (Print) ISSN 2165-8285 (Online)
http://www.researchpub.org/journal/jac/jac.html

JULY 2014

[14] Prakash Kumar, Pradeep Kumar, Arduino Based Wireless

Intrusion Detection Using IR Sensor and GSM, International
Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing, vol. 2, no. 5,
pp. 417-424, May 2013.

be added to the proposed system using wireless sensor

technologies. The proposed system can be developed and
fabricated as a commercial hardware package.

Bader M. O. Al-thobaiti: was born in

June, 1990 in Taif, Saudi Arabia. He
received his B.Sc. in Electronics and
Communication Engineering, department
of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of
Engineering, Taif University, Saudi Arabia
in 2014.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work described in this paper was jointly supported by
department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,
Taif University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
REFERENCES
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[5] R. Shepherd, Bluetooth wireless technology in the home, Journal
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[6] N. Sriskanthan and Tan Karand, Bluetooth Based Home
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[8] Jawarkar, N. P., Ahmed, V., Ladhake, S. A., and Thakare, R. D.,
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[10] Zhang, Ai-Rong and Zhang, Jin-Lan, The Building of Home
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[12] Carl J. Debono and Kurt Abela, Implementation of a Home
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[13] Ahmed ElShafee and Karim Alaa Hamed, Design and
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68, pp. 2177-2183, Aug. 2012.

Iman I. M. Abosolaiman: was born in

January, 1992 in Taif, Saudi Arabia. He
received his B.Sc. in Electronics and
Communication Engineering, department
of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of
Engineering, Taif University, Saudi Arabia
in 2014.
Mahdi H. M. Alzahrani: was born in May,
1991 in Taif, Saudi Arabia. He received his
B.Sc. in Electronics and Communication
Engineering, department of Electrical
Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Taif
University, Saudi Arabia in 2014.

Sami H. A. Almalki: was born in March,

1989 in Hadad Bani Malik, Taif, Saudi
Arabia. He received the B.Sc. in Electronics
and
Communication
Engineering,
department of Electrical Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, Taif University,
Saudi Arabia, in 2014.
Mohamed S. Soliman: An assistant
professor in the department of Electrical
Engineering, Taif University, Saudi Arabia.
His research interests include wireless
communications, antenna array signal
processing, UWB microstrip patch antenna,
numerical methods in electromagnetics,
and antenna measurement techniques.
Dr. Soliman is a member of the IEEE AP
Society, KAUST chapter, Saudi Arabia.

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