Smart Control System Solution for Smart Cities

Abstract

Home or Office Automation may be described as a system to provide ease of operation of connected devices or appliances. Most commercial environments, during active hours, consume large amounts of energy resources; this could be optimized to the minimum by smartly monitoring and managing the resources. IoT (Internet of Things) enables this to be a possible solution at reasonable cost factors. However, it is important to note that in commercial environments, security is a key factor; corporations cannot depend on opening up their networks to the outside world in order to avail the services offered by currently available smart-devices. Localizing and privatizing the entire automation and control system would be desirable for such domains. The work presented in this paper proposes a solution for such applications which is crucial for the development of Smart Cities as a whole along with Smart Homes. One of the simplest tasks is to switch a light source, HVAC systems or any other electrical equipment on or off, by being physically present in the premises, remotely or automatically based on time or a sensor's reading. Furthermore, the intensity of the light source, the temperature of the HVAC systems and such parameters could also be varied. Development of technology in the field has enabled the production of cheap and small-sized computers like Raspberry Pi which are also known as Single Board Computers (SBC). The prototype designed is equipped with a secure local MQTT link for communication between the control and automation system and the Edge Devices. Additionally, it is equipped with a speech recognition system to give the users a much more intuitive and natural mean to communicate with and control the connected devices.