Home automation project with industrial PLC Arduino and Touchberry Screen
The solution requests machines, products and household appliances, from where and when you want.
Industrial Arduino for automated house
The home automation project is a concept that refers to the integration of different technologies in the home through the simultaneous use of electricity, electronics, computers, and telecommunications. Its purpose is to improve safety, comfort, flexibility, communications, energy savings, facilitate comprehensive control of systems for users and offer new services.
Summary
Home automation is a way of adapting to social changes. One of its functions is to facilitate and automate routine processes so that you gain more time to do what really matters.
However, it is convenient to make a clarification: although there is a lot of technology involved, home automation allows you to have more humane, more personal, multifunctional, and flexible homes. In conclusion, if you have a smart home, you will probably no longer spend more energy daily running the washing machine.
This type of project belongs to the so-called IoT since it incorporates different devices connected to each other and controlled by a programmable logic controller for home automation, with which you can communicate to extract information or modify their behavior.
These are the areas on which this project will be based:
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Automation and Industrial Control - includes control (open/close and regulation) of lighting, air conditioning, blinds, doors, and home appliances.
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Security - includes intrusion alarms and technical alarms (fire, gas, power failure).
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Audio and video - includes the distribution of video images captured with cameras inside and outside the home to the µSD card of the industrial PLC.
Apart from the implemented devices, you could add functionalities such as warnings by phone, SMS, or email of the arrival or departure of third parties to the home such as children or housekeepers.
Goals
The aim of this project is to create a system which can collect the information from several sensors located in the different parts of the house and also actuators to control the devices according to the information collected or the user's needs that can be can preset.
Conclusion (hardware)
To achieve our goal, let's design the structure of the system. We have thought of a simplified model because the main idea will be easier to understand and, starting from this point, you will be able to develop it for your house.
All the devices and sensors will be controlled by an Industrial Shields PLC controller for home automation, in this case you will need one of the GPRS family to be able to send the alarms to your phone.
To collect all the necessary information to be able to act on the different devices, you will need a series of sensors that will be directly connected to the Programmable Logic Controller:
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For air conditioning you will need a thermostat (temperature sensor) that will provide analog input and depending on the selected temperature we will turn the air on or off.
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In the case of the accesses to the house (doors and windows) you are going to install capacitive sensors in each one of them (digital inputs) that will indicate when they are open.
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The lights in each room will be switched on based on the presence sensors installed in each room, so in this way there will only be light in a room if there is someone.
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In order to create the alarms we require 2 types of sensors; to detect a fire, there will be a smoke sensor and if there is a gas leak you will know it by means of an air quality sensor.
The blinds of the house will be able to go up and down by means of engines connected to the industrial Controller Arduino. In the case of electrical appliances, they will have to be smart to be able to transmit the information through Bluetooth, and this time you are going to control them directly with the PC panel since it has this type of communication.
The alarms that will be sent to your phone will be activated based on the smoke levels and air quality.
When you leave the house, you will have to press a button that will be read by the program and will interpret that there is nobody in the house. In the event that a window or door is opened, the alarm will be activated and the user will be notified. There is also the option of installing surveillance cameras that can transmit everything they are recording to the industrial controller and save it on the µSD card of the PLC automation.
The PC panel TouchBerry will control the industrial Arduino PLC and will be the user's interface where you can control all the systems with industrial monitoring.
If you have read it this far, you are probably thinking about plc programming for home automation.
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