The Idea of a Smart House - Coursework Example

SMART HOUSE Name Course Instructor Institution Location Date Smart House Introduction The smart house refers to the building that is normally the new one, which is furnished with the special wires that are structured to permit the residents to control the programs of the building using the remote or the combination of the home electronic appliances through entering one command to control the whole system of the building (Harper 2003). For instance, the when the owner of the home leaves, he or she can apply the touchtone phone to regulate the temperature, control devices on and off operations, control the systems of lighting, program the entertainment system and do various tasks. The automation of the homes is increasing rapidly due to wider application of the electronic technologies. The work at home targets the entertainment, communication, security, systems for information and convenience. The control systems of the Smart House are easy to use (Harper 2003). On installing the system in the room, it can give the ability to control the house easily. It makes it easy to monitor the security of the home, control heat in the house, light, and control entertainment with a Smartphone, and iPad. (Kim 2010). The smart home control system is convenient; someone can us the automated control system to operate the devices such as the television by just using the multiple commands, applying instruction to make the light dim in the room. When a person goes to bed, he or she does not need to go and put off light but just use the remote to put it off by pressing the off button (Kim 2010). The smart house automatic systems help to improve the level of safety at home; it helps by giving the instant notification to the person of anything that is taking place within the house. Some of the systems view the scene and record the video, for example, cameras that records and store the images like the IP camera. This images can be used as the evidence for the police in case there is a police case, for example, when the thief enter the house it can record the photo of the thief and makes it easy to trace out (Mann 2005). Smart house systems saves energy and stop the standby consumptions; the smart home automatic systems allow the homeowner to save more money and also save the environment because it acts as the security guard for the home and does not require fuel to operate the equipment especially remotes, cameras, etc. The equipment requires less power to run them (Mann 2005). The control system of the smart home is beneficial to the old person who is living alone at home. Smart house devices can help notify the person when the time for taking medicines has reached, informs the hospital of the fell resident who fell sick and trace how much the person has eaten. When the old person had a forgetful mind, the device can help remind him or her, for example, putting off water before the bath tab is full or turning off power when the cook has walked away. The smart house devices such as power carrier systems (PCS) are applied to send the coded signals through the electric wire of the home to the switches that are programmable or to the outlets (Mann 2005). The power carrier systems are used in controlling the system in the power distribution station, homes, offices, etc. The device can transfer the signals to the wires, and the receiver that was plugged into any electric output at home can get the signal and operate the appliances in which it was attached to (Meyer 2005). The instrument for discussion in this report is the power carrier systems (PCS). In this report the overview of the PCS was done, its applications, the general background and how useful it is in every life was discussed. Automation of homes provides the solution to the fore coming household. Currently, the level of technology has increased, and the houses are being made as smart as the simulated games on the computers. Smart homes are capable of being programmed to do the predefined and the actual instruction to the particular period of the day, week, etc. (Meyer 2005). The garden sparklers can automatically turn on in the morning; the music can be made all around a house to give the enjoyable place for work, entertainment, or for studying. The smart house is regarded as the safe house. House safety is taken to be from indoor and outdoor (Meyer 2005). The safety of the building first means to make the house literally not possible to be robbed and practically very high. A person can put in place the safe perimeter area through the installation of the infrared sensors, cameras or just the regular safety equipment. But all these equipment need electricity for their operation (Mann 2005) Background The power line carrier transfer data on the conductor that can be used at the same time for transmission of alternating current transmission to the final user. The wide range of power line carriers is used in various fields including the automatic control of homes and acres of Internet that is also known as the broadband of power lines (Mann 2005). Majority of the power carries lines are limited to using one kind of wires like those wires within one building but others can use wires from two buildings such as those from the distribution networks and wires within the premises. The typical transformers avoid the propagation of the signals that need the multiple technologies to create a vast network. Several rates for data and frequencies are applied in distinct situations. An individual level of hardships related to technical problems is prevalent among the wireless and power line carriers significantly the like of the spread spectrum for radio signals working in the congested place. Interference from the radio, for instance, has for a long time been the tasks of the group of amateur radio (Harper 2003). One of the prevalent PCS protocol is X10, the technique for the signal for controlling the device that is plugged into the electric power using the remote. The X10 signals that involve the short radio frequency package representing the digital information facilitate the communication among receivers and transmitters (Harper 2003). Europe has been developing the technology to control homes using the smart devices centres and is applied to the European installation bus. It is the embedded protocol for managing the digital communication among the smart devices comprising of the two wire bus lines that are installed alongside the normal wires for electricity. The bus line connects every device to the decentralized systems for communication and it functions as the phone line in which the devices are capable of being controlled. The bus association for the European installation is the part of the Konnex, the organization that focuses on standardizing home buildings and creating the networks throughout Europe. Echelon Corporation is the founder of the system called Lon Works, and it is assisting in adopting the open interoperability standards between the vendors in controlling the networking industry. The LonWorks is referred to as the open standard for the automation of the system and controlling the buildings, transport, industries and local markets. Lon Work protocol has been adopted by the American standard institute in monitoring the system and as the standards for their industry. The association of the LonMark interoperability comprised of over 200 missions of the control companies that are working together to adopt the standard that can merge the multi-vendor systems basing on the LonWorks networks (Kim 2010). The power carrier systems (PCS) The use of PCS has been extensive and can be divided into two different categories. The various categories are: medium voltage or the access technology primarily applied by a utility authority and a low voltage or home appliances that cover the scope of sending the data over the power lines to the residents houses and the move to the electrical outlets in a home (Harper 2003). Low voltage or in-house Home automatic system; several years ago the control of devices at homes had been requiring the establishment of the wiring as the new cables for the homes to provide access to using the appliances to control the homes. With the adoption of power carries systems, automatic control of houses has been made possible and easy by using the power lines. Therefore, it is easy to control the home devices like lighting systems, thermostat, and outlet through the walls, ventilation against heat and system for air conditioning, alarms, sensors, and the security (Kim 2010). Monitoring of the street light; the application of power carrier system has made it possible to control the lighting of the street resulting in a tremendous saving on the bills of electricity for the government by the introduction of selective turn off characteristics. The use of this system improves on the energy savings due to regulations of the energy flow by on and off feature of the system (Kim 2010). Networking to the low cost inter devices The power carrier systems lines can be used to produce the network that connects the devices that are on the power grid together. Because a system like that makes the use of the available power lines, time for installation, and the expenses are virtually not possible. In addition, because each outlet or the junction box can be used as the point where the device can be connected, it can be pushed around several times. A typical example of that kind of network can be to substitute the RS232 wiring needed to set the audio and inputs of the video on house systems (Harper 2003). Medium and low voltage Utility; under this the automatic reading of the meter is the technology that utilizes power lines to transmit directly to the service. Meter can be connected to a concentrator to permit the supplier to gain access to the remote by every single meter for it to read the information like the rates, current and accumulated amounts, amount prepaid, etc. The concentrators can be applied in conjunction with the AC remote LCD devices to manipulate and read information to a single or many points situated at any point on the network of the electricity (Harper 2003). Load shedding of power; by the application of energy carrier systems, the remote control system can be set that can put off power at any time from any location. It can be done by when there is the need to reduce the consumption of power given to the loads when there is a peak demand at a particular time. It is useful in controlling the rate of energy usage especially where there is the illegal connection to the power since power supply can be cut off at any time (Mann 2005). Transmission of broadband data: It is a growing technology that is still at the testing stage (in Italy and USA) that enables the broadband internet reach the house by applying the electrical grids. ABB medium voltage power solution the example of the companies behind the development of this technology (Mann 2005) The X-10 communication protocol The X-10 is one of the oldest rules of communication that have been applied to the networking of the homes since 19778. It was developed by the X-10 US Corporation. Its application in networking the homes is to permit communication among the compatible devices over 110V alternating current (AC) wires (Mann 2005). Description of the protocol The X10 merely gives a technical specification of the way the devices are to be placed on the power lines X-10 simply provides the technical specifications of how a device should put a signal on the power line. The X-10 technology gives the binary data through the use of the technique of amplitude modulation. The setup of the device is shown in the figure below: Figure 1: Arrangement of the X-10 signal The X10 have the detailed address scheme to avoid clashing of the devices. The devices have two addresses i.e. the dwelling address and the individual device address. The typical X10 transmitters contain the start code, address of the house, the address of the device, and the functioning code (for instance, ON, OFF, etc.) (Mann 2005). This should be upgraded to allow for the two-way communication among the devices. Summary The smart house has been the most convenient house for use as the home and very convenient for the old people since it gives them the useful reminder in some instances. The devices use in the smart house primarily is creating the automatic control of the house systems. The power carrier system that was developed by the Echelon Corporation has made very convenient for creating the control systems of the house. However, the system at some point does not support two-way communications among the devices so the need for its upgrade in recommended. Conclusion The power carrier system is currently used in the automatic control of the house devices through the use of the remotes. The wider application is like the in-house low voltage devices, monitoring of the streetlights. The power carrier system has made it easy for many families (home houses) to cut on so many expenses such as electricity and improve the status of the environmental protection since the device does not take much power and does not produce any smoke to the environment. The recommendation for future improvement is that the device should be upgraded to allow the communication between two devices so as to permit two-way communication. References Harper, R., 2003. Inside the smart home. London, Springer. Kim, T.-H., & Adeli, H., 2010. Advances in computer science and information technology: AST/UCMA/ISA/ACN 2010 conferences, Miyazaki, Japan, June 23-25, 2010 ; joint proceedings. Berlin, Springer. Mann, W. C., 2005. Smart Technology for Aging, Disability and Independence the State of the Science. Hoboken, John Wiley & Sons. http://www.123library.org/book_details/?id=9946. Meyer, G.,2005. Smart home hacks. Sebastopol, CA, O'Reilly. Suryadevara, N. K., & Mukhopadhyay, S. C., 2015. Smart homes: design, implementation and issues. Read More