Web based Home Automation System Prototype using Raspberry Pi

F. I. Sangkop, G. C. Rorimpandey, V. P. Rantung, C. P. C. Munaiseche,

G. W. Tombiling, J. P. A. Runtuwene and P. T. D. Rompas

Informatics Engineering, Universitas Negeri Manado,North Sulawesi, Indonesia

{ivan.sangkop, gladlycrorimpandey, vivirantung, cindymunaiseche, gwtombiling, julyeta.par,

Keywords: Web Based, Home Automation System, Prototype, Raspberry PI

Abstract: Progress in the field of technology has grown very rapidly, especially related to Internet of Things (IoT)

where the development of smart home automation system can be found in our daily life. Electronic devices

such as lights in the house are generally controlled manually, which the homeowner often forget to turn off

while going out and resulting in excessive use of electrical energy. The development of a web-based home

automation system prototype using the raspberry pi can provide a solution to remotely control an electronic

device. The method used to develop the system is prototyping model to built, tested and refined repeatedly

until a final prototype is achieved. The result of this research is a prototype will simulate 4 electric outlets

using 4 lamps, and the raspberry pi will work as the web server enabling the user to be able to remotely

control the electronic device and minimize excessive use of electrical energy.

1 INTRODUCTION

The rapid development of technology has influence

many aspect of daily activities and has become an

integrated part of people’s lives. Home Automation

System (HAS) is growing faster and it requires

extensive development to be implemented as a smart

home. The purpose of home automation is to makes

living in the house more enjoyable or productive by

applying intelligence to make it happen. Home

automation can be seen as a collection of open

source software, consumer hardware and a few line

of code that makes them interact. Different

technologies and programming languages can be

used to finish the tasks. The communication

protocols will be essential in home automation and

has been the first step toward true technology

integration. Wide variety of options are available for

HAS such as GSM based HAS, Bluetooth based

HAS, Phone based HAS, Zigbee based HAS,

Wireless Control System and Mixed Type (Satish et

al., 2015). Data source will provide information and

the software and process are necessary to combine

everything into a unified technology. Typical sensor

that’s been used in HAS modelling involved infrared

remote, Bluetooth and GSM. While infrared and

Bluetooth has a range issue, the GSM can be used

worldwide to control HAS from anywhere. The key

advantage of system is if control circuit fails then

manual switching option of traditional method is

available (Shinde et al., 2017).

The priority for developing a HAS is to have an

automatic or controlled appliances and equipment in

the vicinity. Specialized system comes with higher

price tag, while cheaper solution can be made based

on mini computer system such as Raspberry Pi and

Java ME 8 (Rostyslav et al., 2015). The Raspberry

Pi provision of GPIO makes it capable of running

several services at once, expanded easily, and better

update. With a number of specific modules that are

available for expansion to be implemented in a low

of new projects (Goodwin, 2013).

Another development on the concept of smart

home is by using PIC16F887 as the microcontroller

and integrates it with GSM to provide the smart

automated house system with the desired baud rate

of 9600 bps. The proposed prototype then will be

implemented and tested with maximum of four loads

and shows the accuracy of ≥98% (Teymourzadeh et

al., 2013). HAS was developed using open source

software technology for computer based

applications. The huge number of data collected

needs efficient data storage mechanisms for

continuous monitoring. (Suryadevara and

Mukhopadhyay, 2015).

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Sangkop, F., Rorimpandey, G., Rantung, V., Munaiseche, C., Tombiling, G., Runtuwene, J. and Rompas, P.

Web based Home Automation System Prototype using Raspberry Pi.

DOI: 10.5220/0009010002920297

In Proceedings of the 7th Engineering International Conference on Education, Concept and Application on Green Technology (EIC 2018), pages 292-297

ISBN: 978-989-758-411-4

The lack of monitoring in the use of electronic

devices has an impact on excessive use of electrical

energy and increasing electricity bills. The

fundamental of building an automation system for an

office or home is to acquire an efficient and

economical use of the electricity. The use of wireless

technologies provide several advantages such as

reduced installation costs, internet connectivity,

scalable and expandable (Gunge and Yalagi, 2016).

HAS using Raspberry pi and Internet of Things

technology are suitable for real time monitoring and

for controlling the home appliances remotely. It also

provide extra layer of security and protection, can be

employed in many places. (Pavithra and Ranjith,

2015).

Most homeowner are not efficient in operating

various electronic equipment in daily life. For

example the lights in a room that are no longer used

but still on and homeowners often forgot to turn off

electronic devices that has not been used when

leaving. To help reduce the negligence use of these

electronic devices, this research will overview the

implementation of a Raspberry Pi Mini PC as a

controller through the PHP programming language

to make it easier for homeowners to control

electronic equipment.

2 PROPOSED SYSTEM

Prototyping model will be used to develop the

system and it is a system development model that

will assist developer and other stakeholder to better

understand what is to be built when the requirement

are fuzzy. The constructed prototype constructed is

deployed and evaluated by stakeholders. Prototype

serves as a mechanism to identify software

requirements (Pressman, 2011) as shown in Figure

Figure 1: Prototyping paradigm (Pressman, 2010).

SWOT analysis (Strength, Weakness,

Opportunities and Threats) is the process of

formulating a strategy to find strategic solution

between external opportunities and internal strengths

while paying attention to external threats and

internal weaknesses. One way to conclude the

strategic factors is to combine external strategic

factors with internal strategic factors into a summary

analysis of strategic factors. Based on the SWOT

analysis in Table 1, a Web-based Prototype Home

Automation System using Raspberry Pi will be built.

It will simulate the lights controlling as a solution in

dealing with problems that occur in current situation

of homeowner.

Table 1: SWOT analysis.

Internal

External

Strength:

The configuration

and ease of use of

the control

system.

Weakness:

The existing

control system is

still less efficient

because the

control distance

is limited.

Opportunity:

Security is

trustworthy,

still widely

used by the

community.

S-O Strategy:

Develop a control

system that is

easy to use and

safe, develop a

system that can

attract people's

interest.

W-O Strategy:

Develop an

electrical control

system that can

be accessed

anywhere and

anytime.

Threat:

The use of

electrical

energy is not

controlled.

S-T Strategy:

Building a control

system that is

easy to use and

can minimize

errors in

controlling and

using electrical

energy.

W-T Strategy:

Develop a

control system

that is not limited

to distance that

can minimize the

use of

uncontrolled

electrical energy.

Figure 2: Architecture of proposed HAS.

Web based Home Automation System Prototype using Raspberry Pi

293

From Figure 2, it can be seen that a PC or

smartphone is the device that will be used to access

the system website page so that it can control

electricity on simulated devices with 4 lights via the

internet. The power supply is a device that provides

a voltage source to Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi in this system is used as a Web

Server and the controller for electrical devices

through Relay Module. To enable the control of

Relay Module on Raspberry Pi, there is a GPIO Pin

that can be used for communication with other

devices and on this system there are 4 pins that will

be used as output pins, namely GPIO 18, GPIO 23,

GPIO 24, and GPIO 25. Raspberry Pi used in this

system is the Raspberry Pi B model.

Relay is an electronic switch that can be

controlled by providing logic value 0 or 1 which in

the construction of this system, the input is obtained

from Raspberry Pi GPIO pins. The relay used in the

design of this system is the DT-I / O Quad Relay

Board from Innovative Electronics. Relay on this

system is used to control electrical devices that can

be directly connected via a jumper cable to the

Raspberry Pi mini pc.

3 SYSTEM DESIGN

The work flow from the Home Automation

Prototype will be described on system design. To be

able to control the electrical devices in this system

simulated with lights, first the user must log on the

web page, after that the system will check the user's

user data is not suitable then the user cannot enter

the system to control the lights, so the user must re-

After logging in correctly, the user can choose the

light mode such as ON or OFF mode on the web

page. The system will then change the GPIO status

value 1 or 0 on Raspberry Pi based on the light mode

selected by the user on the web page, if the GPIO

status is 1 then the system will turn on the light, and

if the GPIO status is 0 then the system will turn off

the light. The user will receive light status

information on the web page, and then the user can

logout to exit the system control web page.

Website interface design is designed to make it

easier for users to interact with the system. The

website created only has 2 pages, which is the login

page and the control page. The website that will be

created is also a responsive website that can adjust

the size of the website based on the size of each

screen that accesses this system. Figure 3 and 4 is

the website design that will be created. The mock-up

is created using the Balsamiq Mock-up 3

application.

Figure 3: Login page design.

Figure 4: Control page design.

Figure 5 shows how the configuration of

hardware and software components used in this

system. Based on the system architecture design,

there are 4 hardware components that are configured

to be implemented in this system, namely

pc/smartphone, raspberry pi, relays, and lights.

Figure 5: HAS Deployment diagram.

Users can access the Prototype Home

Automation System interface by using a PC or

smartphone that has a web browser application

installed. Raspberry Pi is a tool that will be used as a

server in this system, there are three applications

installed on Raspberry Pi so that it can be used for

controlling lights. The applications are Apache2,

EIC 2018 - The 7th Engineering International Conference (EIC), Engineering International Conference on Education, Concept and

Application on Green Technology

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Dataplicity, and WiringPi. A PC or smartphone can

connect to Raspberry Pi via HTTP (Hypertext

Transfer Protocol). Relay is a tool used as a

magnetic switch to turn on or turn off the lights.

Relay relies heavily on Raspberry Pi to run.

4 IMPLEMENTATION

Based on the design of the user interface prototype

that has been designed, the next stage is to

implement the web based application using PHP and

HTML that can be accessed online where the

devices can be controlled and monitored remotely.

Rostylav et al., (2015) developed a HAS using Java

ME with various sensors and only works offline.

Figure 6: Login page (version 1).

The initial version of login page as shown in

Figure 6 will require the users to enter a username

and password to enter the next page. The status of all

lights will be visible, showing whether it is turned

On or Off as shown in control page Figure 7.

Figure 7: Control page (version 1).

When the user clicks the On/Off button, the

button and icon will change colour, which indicates

that the button is active. Options menu in the sidebar

will be highlighted when the cursor is directed at

each option for both elements. On control page the

user can choose the light mode, which is On/Off as

provided in the table, there are 4 lights that can be

controlled. Users will be transferred to the login

page when clicking on the logout button. The HAS

website is accessible through a web browser and it

will communicate with the Raspberry Pi mini pc

using a number of supporting software namely

WiringPi, PHP5, Apache, and Dataplicity which are

configured on Raspberry Pi. Sweta and Dinesha

(2016) implement HAS that support voice command

but accessed by using an IP address and can only be

used with android smartphone.

Figure 8: Login page (version 2).

Figure 9: Control page (version 2).

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295

Users then evaluate the website user interface

and based on their feedback, some changes has been

made in the interface design as shown in Figure 8

and Figure 9. The HAS consists of Raspberry Pi as

the central control of all hardware that has been used

in this system. The result of this research in the form

of hardware is an electrical device control system

using the Raspberry Pi as a control centre for

electrical devices that receives commands from the

website and forwards commands to the relay module

to turn on or off the electrical device. Teymourzadeh

et al., (2013) investigates the potential of HAS based

on SMS technology and microcontroller.

Figure 10 shows the electronic circuit of

raspberry pi home automation system hardware that

is implemented in prototype form. Connected

directly to the power source and forwarded to the

relay module and electrical devices which in the

system prototype is implemented in the form of a

lamp so that it can be controlled through the system.

Figure 10: HAS hardware prototype.

Server response testing is to test the response

speed of the server to process commands from user

turning on a lamp, and the test process applied to all

four lights using the internet network at different

times, namely at night and morning. Based on the

data in Table 2, the average response time from the

server to be able to turn on a lamp is 1.7 seconds. So

it can be concluded that the main factor that

influences the performance of the system is the

internet network, if the internet network is slow, the

process carried out by the server to receive data

becomes slow.

Table 2: Server response testing.

Night Morning

Lamp 1

02.15 sec 01.71 sec

Lamp 2

01.97 sec 01.25 sec

Lamp 3

01.71 sec 01.45 sec

Lamp 4

02.55 sec 01.25 sec

5 CONCLUSIONS

Based on the design and results of the tests that have

been carried out, the proposed home automation

system prototype is able to remotely control the

electronic device and minimize excessive use of

electrical energy. In this case, it is made using 4

lights as a simulation of electronic devices,

raspberry pi which functions as a server, and a relay

module that functions as a magnetic switch. The user

interface in this system can be accessed using a PC

or smartphone. Prototype of web-based home

automation system using raspberry pi allows users to

be able to control electronic devices without being

limited by distance using the internet network.

For future works, it is expected to be developed

and improved by adding various sensors in the

system, using scheduling to turn on/off electronic

devices, measuring the use of electrical energy, etc.

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