Home automation using the Internet of Things

Abstract: This bachelor’s thesis project is intended to study IoT (Internet of Things) and apply it to an application in home automation. To this purpose, a prototype has been implemented that can measure indoor temperature and humidity, display the measurement data on an LCD display, and then send the measurement data to a cloud server for users to read online. The hardware of the system consists of a digital temperature and humidity sensor (DHT11), a microcontroller board (Arduino MKR 1000 Wi-Fi) and an LCD display. The measurement is made with the sensor under the control by the microcontroller and shown on the LCD display; and at the same time, the measurement data is sent via Wi-Fi (available on the board) to the cloud server to display the data on a user interface on the cloud. The low power consumption and low cost as well as security have been taken into account in the implementation.  The prototype has been tested and evaluated, and it is shown to work well as above mentioned. Both Arduino IDE and Arduino IoT Cloud platform are strong development tools to extend the capability and performance for home automation with IoT. Future work can be done on developing a larger IoT network for home automation, a user-friendly interface for both PC and mobile devices, and an indicator showing energy consumption and battery life.