Smart-home automation using IoT-based sensing and monitoring platform

In order to help maintain comfortable living conditions within a home, home monitoring and automation are utilized. The standards of human's comfort in homes can be categorized into several types. Among these categories, the most significant ones are the thermal comfort, which is related to temperature and humidity, followed by the visual comfort, related to colors and light, and hygienic comfort, associated with air quality. A system can be set to monitor these parameters to help maintain them within an acceptable range. Additionally, making the house smart is to allow for intelligent automatic executing of several commands after analyzing the collected data. Automation can be accomplished by using the Internet of Things (IoT). This gives the inhabitant accesses to certain data in the house and the ability to control some parameters remotely. This paper presents the complete design of an IoT based sensing and monitoring system for smart home automation. The proposed design uses the EmonCMS platform for collecting and visualizing monitored data and remote controlling of home appliances and devices. The selected platform is very flexible and user-friendly. The sensing of different variables inside the house is conducted using the NodeMCU-ESP8266 microcontroller board, which allows realtime data sensing, processing and uploading/downloading to/from the EmonCMS cloud server.