A low-cost Home Automation System based on Power-Line Communication Links

In this paper we present a feasible Home Automation System scenario based on a very cheap distributed microcontroller architecture, rather than on devices interconnected by an expensive commercial bus. The means used for data communication is the home powerline, so that the system doesn't require placing other cables in addition to standard electrical facilities. Building automation is now a day very widespread in all the industrialized countries, meaning with the term the application of automation and information technologies for the management of buildings like schools, hospitals, public edifices, private houses and so on. A younger sister of building automation is domotics, which is actually the application of the same techniques and tools in a domestic scenario, instead of a very big building. In this application domain, the cost, still very high, is the most important limit to the diffusion of these systems. Moreover, the lack in standardization and uniformity of communication protocols for home automation systems (i.e. Konnex-EIB®, MyHome BTicino®, Lonworks®, to mention a few) is often a trouble for technicians required to design and install such plants, especially when the plant has to be installed in a pre-existing building whose electrical cabling is not prearranged to support that level of automation. In this case the solution proposed by the application of power line communication links (such as the U.S. X10 protocol) could be very interesting. These methods exploit standard electric lines (e.g. 220V AC, 50 Hz) to transmit data, with specific modulation techniques, among the different modules (sensors, actuators, controllers) which are installed in the house. Standard protocols of this type are quite widespread in the United States, but their presence in European market is still quite limited. In this paper we present a practical implementation of a power line communication protocol, realized by means of Microchip PICmicro® microcontrollers.

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