Acoustic smart sensors based integrated system for smart homes

Abstract

Nowadays, buildings are being progressively in- tegrated with an increasing number of sensors. However, in most cases, these sensors are application specific, limiting their productivity and scalability. In order to extend the usual scope of ordinary sensors, in this paper, we propose and describe the implementation of a system based on sound and vibration sensors, embedded in the walls of a smart home. The main idea is to use the wall’ knocking as a human machine interface to control and automate the operation of home devices such as, for example, lights. The developed system called smart knocking sensor unit (SKSU) and is composed of three basic building blocks: sensing, processing and communications. The system establishes communication with a central gateway of the smart home, which can further execute a large variety of functions that can be programmed in the home central unit. The SKSUs were installed in home and various tests were conducted to validate the functionality of the proposed system.