World of Computer Science and Information Technology Journal (WCSIT)

ISSN: 2221-0741
Vol. 1, No. 4, 144-147, 2011

Remote Home Management:

An alternative for working at home while away
1
B. I. Ahmad, 2F. Yakubu, 3M. A. Bagiwa, 4U. I. Abdullahi
1
Department of Mathematics, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Kaduna, Nigeria
2
Iya Abubakar Computer Center, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Kaduna, Nigeria
3
Department of Mathematics, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Kaduna, Nigeria
4
Department of Mathematics, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Kaduna, Nigeria
1
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

AbstractRemote home management is one of the developing areas in current technology. In this paper we described how to
manage and control home appliances using mobile phone, people can use this system to do things in their home from a far place
before they reach home. For instance, user may start his/her room cooler or heater so that before they reach home the condition in
the room will be conducive, also appliances like washing machine and cooker can be started and if the time taken for this
appliances to perform a task is known that can also be set, so that if the time elapsed the appliance will automatically switch off
itself. To control an appliance the user sends a command in form of SMS from his/her mobile phone to a computer which is
connected to the appliance, once the message is received the computer will send the command to a microcontroller for controlling
the appliance appropriately.

Keywords- Remote control; home appliances; J2ME; mobile phone; SMS; GSM; GAMMU; DTMF.

microcontroller, which can be ON or OFF a specific device, a

I. INTRODUCTION code that indicate completion of a function would be sent back
Mobile phones are getting more advanced which allow to the user's mobile phone. This system also provides security
people to develop applications that run on them. Currently by means of alarming the user when there is an intrusion.
mobile phones are gradually replacing PCs because of their In another paper [2], home/office remote controller
ability to do almost all whatever computers can do. equipped with power controllers, an alarm system, a voice
Remote management and control of devices is one of the memory and backup battery unit was developed. When the
areas where an application can be developed to makes our life user switch ON alarm system, it monitors fire and PIR
easier. Different approaches can be followed to develop (Passive Infrared) detectors, the system allow the user to use
remote management or control systems, some use DTMF up to 8 detectors, whenever there is fire outbreak the system
(Dual Tone Multi Frequency) technology which involves using can call up to 5 numbers including fire brigade, police, and the
mobile phones tone to perform an action, while some use SMS owner of the premises and provide the pre-recorded voice
technology to send the command for a particular action, some message. There is a unit that supplies power to the system in
also use GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) technology to case of power failure.
directly interface mobile phone and the computer. We can have an integrated system for remote controlling
devices like GSM based Remote Monitoring and Control
System[3], which is used for controlling, monitoring and
II. RELATED WORK accessing the performance of remotely situated device
A lot of research work has been carried out in the area of parameters such as Temperature, Pressure, and Humidity etc.
wireless and mobile computing, as a result of which the area is Whenever the value crosses a certain limit, an SMS will be
becoming very wide. Even though, there are still some sent to the user as a notification.
challenges in the area like using database systems for mobile Joude et al developed a system called Home Management
[6], security, streaming of data, etc... System using a GPRS-Enabled Device [4]; the system is used
A system of controlling devices using DTMF was to control household devices like fan, light, and water heater.
developed [1], in which a user has to call a phone connected to The main part of the system are divided into three: the client
the system via head set, then after the call is answered (auto which is a mobile phone with a software installed for selecting
answer) the user would enter two/three digit code. When the the device and the operation intended to perform on the
user presses these codes a specific operation is performed by device, server which is a computer with database for storing

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the status of the device, and a hardware that control the that will run on the users mobile phone with the phone number
devices connected to the server via serial communication. of the receiving phone embedded. The application also expects
Apart from handling the devices using General Packet Radio the user to supply right login credentials for authenticating the
Service (GPRS), the system sends notification to the user if user before having access to it.
the device status changes.
Some systems were developed with the option of either B. Server
using mobile phone or a computer to control devices like The server in this system is a computer connected with a
Home Network System [5]. This is an integrated system that mobile phone for receiving the message from the user. The
uses GSM mobile or a computer for monitoring and connection is done via RS232, when a message is received it
controlling of devices, the system comprised of HNS gateway will first enter the mobile phone then immediately an SMS
for receiving and managing the messages and three Gateway Application called Gammu download the message
subsystems. The subsystems are: home appliance like fan, into the computer and store it in a database. The content of the
bulb, etc; security which uses charged-coupled device (CCD) message is checked upon received to know what appliance the
camera for surveillance and messaging which uses email as a user wants to control and what operation (on/off) to be
sample application. performed.
This is the main component of the system where we have
III. SYSTEM STRUCTURE the core functionality; we have a program that retrieves the
This system is structured as shown in Figure 1. The system message received from the database and use the message
consist of two mobile phones, one to be used by the user while content to decide on which decision to take. The decisions
the other for receiving the message sent by the user and for include, the appliance to act on, the operation to perform on
that appliance (ON, OFF, or ON for some times). When the
decision is taken, the server will then sends data to one of the
cables connected to the microcontroller that will either switch
ON or OFF the appliance. Since any time the user can send a
message, the server needs to always be ON.

C. Microcontroller
The microcontroller consists of diodes, resistors, transistors
and relay for proper control of the appliances. The application
can only be used to control one appliance at a time, but you can
have one appliance started for sometimes and before it is
Fig. 1: System Block Diagram. stopped you can control another. The circuit diagram is
sending reply back to the user.

There is a computer (server) as part of the system, which

stores the message received and uses the content of the
message to know which appliance the user wants to control.
Controlling the appliances is achieved using a circuit that sends
the command to the appliances. The computer is connected the
circuit via parallel connection, while the mobile phone is
connected to it via serial connection.

IV. SYSTEM COMPONENTS

Fig. 2: Circuit Diagram.
The main components of the system are described below. depicted in figure 2.
A. Users Mobile Phone
The first part of the system is the users mobile phone, D. Devices
which is a phone that supports Java. We need Java enabled The devices are the appliances that the user wants to
phone because we have an application developed using Java 2 control; user can control up to four appliances using this
Micro Edition (J2ME) technology for sending the message to system. The appliance can be a washing machine, cooler,
control the appliances. We can use the normal Short Message boiler, cooker, etc. Any of these devices can be started while
Service (SMS) provided by the manufacturers of mobile phone, the user is away and stopped as desired. Devices that may
but in that case people can see the mobile number of the phone cause problem if not stopped on time like cooker, we make
that will receive the message which may increase the risk of them in such a way that once they are started there is a time
unauthorized access to the system; also when sending the limit for them to be stopped. But user can start appliances like
message the user can make mistake in typing the number. To Air Conditioner and stop them any time they wish.
solve the problems above we decided to have an application

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V. PROCESS FLOW The first field represents the appliance name, the middle is a
The first step in using this system is to write and send the number that represent the type of operation; one is ON while
command in form of SMS to the mobile phone connected to zero is OFF, while the last field represents the time an
the server, when the message is received it will now be stored appliance will take to be ON. Each time a message is sent, it
in Database (MySQL). The content of the message is has to be stored in the database and the message has to be
examined to know what operation the user wants to perform; broken down into fields, then the program on the server take
the whole process is illustrated in figure 3. the values for those fields and send a command specific to the
type of operation to microcontroller which will then act on the
appliance. For instance, the diagram in figure 4 is a message
that will start an AC, while that of figure 5 is for starting a
cooker for 1800 seconds (30 min).

Fig. 5 Sample Message (ON for sometimes).

Fig. 3 Process Flow. VI. CONCLUSION

In this part we have a series of decision statements for This paper described how we can develop a remote
selecting the appliance, type of operation, etc. management and control system for home appliances, the
The message body must have two or three fields, two fields system not only allows the user to start or stop appliances but
message means a user wants to perform either ON or OFF can also specify how long did he/she wants an appliance to be
operation as shown in figure 4, while three fields message as ON. With this system user can control up to four devices.
depicted in figure 5 is for starting an appliance and stop after There are limitations for this system which brings about the
some times. need for further improvement, some of which include:
Controlling multiple appliances concurrently.
Sending a confirmation message back to the user.
Be able to know the status of the appliances.
Add DTMF technology as an alternative to SMS.
REFERENCES

[1] C. K. Das, M. Sanaullah, H. M. G. Sarower and M. M. Hassan,

Development of a Cell Phone Based Remote Control System: an
Effective Switching System for Controlling Home and Office
Appliances, International Journal of Electrical and Computer Sciences
(IJECS), vol. 9, No. 10, pp. 3743.
[2] H. H. Goktas, N. Daldal, A Cellular Phone Based Home/Office
Controller and Alarm System, G. U. Journal of Science, vol. 19, pp.21
26, 2006.
[3] B. Ramamurthy, S. Bhargavi and R. Shashikumar, Design and
Implementation of GSM based Remote Monitoring and Control system
for Industrial process Parameters, International Journal of Computer
Science and Internet Security (IJCSIS) , vol. 8, No. 5, pp. 219225.
2010.
Fig. 4 Sample message (ON).

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[4] Jaoude, N. B. Tannir, D. and Tannir, M. (2004). Home Management http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=859940.859945. [Accessed
System using a GPRSEnabled Mobile Device. Department of Electrical October 30, 2010]
and Computer Engineering. American University of Beirut, Beirut, [6] S. D. Sharma and R. S. Kasana, Research Issues and Challenges of
Lebanon. Mobile Database Systems,International Journal of Computer
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AUTHORS PROFILE

Barroon Ismaeel Ahmad received the B.Sc.

Degree from Usmanu Danfodiyo University
Sokoto Nigeria, in 2006. He joined
Department of Mathematics, Ahmadu Bello
University, Zaria as Graduate Assistant in
2008, and currently he is a Postgraduate
Student in the same Department. His interests
are Networking and Mobile Application
Development.

Friday Yakubu received the B.Tech. Degree

from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, University,
Bauchi, Nigeria, in 2003, he obtained Masters
of Information Management from A.B.U Zaria
in 2008. He joined Ahmadu Bello University,
Zaria in 2006. His interests are Networking
and Web Based Programming.

Mustapha Aminu Bagiwa is an M.Sc. Student

of Computer Science in Ahmadu Bello
University, Zaria. Nigeria. He received his
B.Sc. Degree in computer science from
Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto,
Nigeria in 2006. He is currently working as a
Graduate Assistant in the Department of
Mathematics, Ahmadu Bello University,
Zaria. Nigeria.

Umar Isyaku Abdullahi obtained his first

degree in mathematics from Ahmadu Bello
University Zaria, Nigeria in 2006. He attended
Robert Gordon University United Kingdom
where he obtained MSc in computing:
Software Technology in 2009. His research
interests are: Machine learning, Mobile
application, Application of Statistical
Computing in Sampling Survey, and Statistical
Modeling.

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