ECERE2014-P028

DTMF Based Home Appliances Control Using Cell

Phone
Md. Mamunoor Islam1, Mehdi Hasan Chowdhury2
Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology
Chittagong-4349, Bangladesh
E-mail address: [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract— Aim of this paper is to represent a developed control system which allows user to control his/her home appliances and systems
from any location using a cell phone. One has to make a call from his/her cell phone to maintain the home appliances wirelessly. As the
cellular communication is available everywhere in the world, it will be much easier to employ this technology in practical life. In the
fast growing world, everyone wants to control everything by his hand. This new developed technology will meet up the demand of people
by providing them the control of their home. As the world is getting digitalized in every moments, this developed control system will
add a new dimension in daily lifestyle. So no more manual control will be existed rather everything will be automatic. Thus the living
environment will be much more enhanced and satisfactory.

Keywords— DTMF decoder, Wireless control, Home appliances, Relay, Cell phone

I. INTRODUCTION

Traditionally electrical appliances in a home are controlled

via switches that regulate the electricity to these devices. As the
world gets more and more technologically advanced, new
technology is coming in deeper and deeper into people’s lives
even at home. In the age of electronic systems it is important to
be able to control and acquire information from everywhere [1].
This paper demonstrates an advanced control system which
will assist users to monitor their home electric devices such as
light, fan, air-conditioner, refrigerator, television etc. through
cell phone. The remote control technologies have been used in
the fields like factory automation, space exploration, in places
where human access is difficult. As this has been achieved in
the domestic systems partially, many corporations and
laboratories are researching the methods which enable human
to control and monitor efficiently and easily in home or Fig. 1 Using prototype of the proposed system
outdoor. Controlling the domestic system regardless of time
and space is an important challenge. unique tone which consists of two different frequencies one
As the cell phone enables people to connect with the outside each of higher and lower frequency range. The resultant tone is
devices via cellular communication network regardless of time convolution of two frequencies. Each of these tones is
and space, the cell phone is a suitable device to control composed of two pure sine waves of the low and high
domestic systems [1]. frequencies superimposed on each other. These two frequencies
explicitly represent one of the digits on the cell keypad. Thus
II. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM generated signal can be expressed mathematically as follows:
This wireless remote control system is developed to control
home appliances from any place. The system is operated by an = sin 2 + sin 2
electronic device which is based on dual tone multi frequency
(DTMF) technology. In this technology, the cellular Where AH, AL are the amplitudes & fH, fL are the frequencies of
communication network is used to control all electric devices high & low frequency range [2].
wirelessly. One has to send the command by dialling through Properties of DTMF tone frequencies are:
his cell phone. Then he can easily control the electrical devices • No frequency is an integer multiple of another.
according to his necessity. • The difference between any two frequencies does not
Duel Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF) tone is used to identify equal any of the frequencies.
which key is pressed in the keypad of cell phone. keypad is used • The sum of any two frequencies does not equal any of
as password entry device. Pressing any key generates an the frequencies.

1st National Conference on Electrical & Communication Engineering and Renewable Energy
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 the controlling device. So first one has to give a call to the cell
phone near to the controlling device. This signal is received by
the 3.5mm headphone jack connected with that cell phone.

Fig. 2 Keypad of cell phone with 12 keys and frequencies (Hz) [5]

To use the DTMF technology, the DTMF decoder IC

(MT8870) is used. The decoder circuit filters the signal sent by
the users and gives the output. The device has some other Fig. 5 Block diagram
components such as transistor (BD135), microcontroller When the user presses any key of his cell phone, the DTMF
(PIC16F73), relay and cell. Relays are used to drive different tone corresponding to that key is passed to the DTMF decoder
kinds of electrical devices. The hardware of the proposed circuit through the headphone jack. The DTMF decoder circuit
system and the circuit diagram of DTMF decoder are given filters the signal and gives the output to the microcontroller.
below at Fig. 3 & 4. There are four outputs which are denoted by Q1, Q2, Q3 and
Q4. The table of the output for the different keys is given below.
TABLE I
OUTPUT FOR DIFFERENT KEYS

Low High
Button Frequency(Hz) Frequency(Hz) Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

1 697 1209 0 0 0 1
2 697 1336 0 0 1 0
3 697 1477 0 0 1 1
4 770 1209 0 1 0 0
5 770 1336 0 1 0 1
6 770 1477 0 1 1 0
7 852 1209 0 1 1 1
8 852 1336 1 0 0 0
9 852 1477 1 0 0 1
Fig. 3 Hardware of the proposed system 0 941 1209 1 0 1 0
* 941 1336 1 0 1 1
# 941 1477 1 1 0 0

The outputs are switched by the transistor (BD135) and then

sent to the microcontroller according to the key pressed by the
user. The micro-controller then sends the voltage to the relay.
By this relay is being switched and drives the different kinds of
electric devices. Relay is used in this circuit because it can drive
the high voltage devices also. So all kind of electrical devices
which are used by the people at home can be easily controlled
by this electronic controlling device.

Fig. 4 Circuit diagram of DTMF decoder [3]

IV. RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS
III. METHODOLOGY To implement this system in practical life, three relays are
The control of the electric devices of home is monitored by taken and for the indication of the outputs, three light emitting
the user through his cell phone. Another cell phone is needed in diodes (LED) are used. Then some of the keys of the cell

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keypad are used to experiment the control system by getting the
outputs corresponding to the pressed key.

TABLE II
IMPLEMENTED COMMANDS

Pressed key Results

1 Turn on device 1
2 Turn on device 2
3 Turn on device 3
7 Turn on all 3 devices
5 Turn off all 3 devices

The DTMF technology used in this system device is very

fast. So the control of the electric devices is very easy with this
system. As the cost of the project is low and the network of the
cellular communication is wide-spread, the users should
experiment this technology in their home. As it is based on
wireless cellular communication, they can control their home
appliances from any part of the world by pressing keys of their
cell phone.

V. CONCLUSION
The project has been done for the benefit of people by
making their life more advanced. As it is a wireless remote
control system, this allows the people to control their home by
their hand from any place of the world. Again cell phone has
become an important part in daily life. So it can be easily
utilized to enhance the quality of daily lifestyle. Last of all, this
try of the wireless control of home appliances is done for the
people’s benefit by applying this technology in their life.

REFERENCES
[1] Tuljappa M Ladwa, Sanjay M Ladwa, R Sudharshan Kaarthik,
Alok Ranjan Dhara, Nayan Dalei, “Control of Remote Domestic
System Using DTMF ”,ICICI-BME 2009 Bandung, Indonesia, page
69-74.

[2] Roshan Ghosh “DTMF Based Controller for Efficiency

Improvement of a PV Cell & Relay Operation Control” (IJERA),
Vol. 2, Issue 3, May-Jun 2012, pp.2903-2911.

[3] Haimanti Chakraborty, Prof. (Dr.) Prabir Banerjee, “Design of a

Circuit for Remote Control of Multiple Devices using DTMF
Encoder and Decoder”, International Journal of Scientific and
Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013.

[4] Abdiweli Abdillahi Soufi, Abdirasoul Jabar Alzubaidi, “Remote

Control System through Cell and DTMF”, International Journal of
Computational Engineering Research, Vol, 03, Issue-8.

[5] Yavuz EROL, Hasan H. BALIK, Serkan INAL and Duygu

KARABULUT, “Safe and Secure PIC Based Remote Control
Application for Intelligent Home”, IJCSNS International Journal of
Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.7 No.5, May 2007,
page 179-182.

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