Intelligent DC Power Monitoring System and Sensor

Network Based on ZigBee-Equipped Smart Sockets

Yi-shiun Tsai, Chun-Yi Chu, Min-che Li, Yuan-Hsiang Lin and Poki Chen
Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
Taipei, Taiwan
b10102016, b10102022, M10202123, linyh, [email protected]

Abstract—To fit the development trend of future DC micro-

grids, an intelligent DC power monitoring system and sensor
network is proposed in this paper for smart homes. The system is
mainly composed of DC smart socket, sensors, home gateway,
cloud sever and remote monitor device. According to Internet of
things (IoT), all devices are connected through wireless protocols,
such as Zigbee, WiFi and 3G/4G mobile communications, to
maximize the flexibility and ease the installation for users. All
power consumption, real-time video streaming and environment
sensing can be accessed remotely via smart phones, pads or
computers to ensure the most security and comfortability for
user homes. Alarms will be issued for any irregular condition
sensed. The detail report and statistics for home appliances are
also provided to help users reschedule the appliance usage to
lower the electricity bills. The proposed system is realized with
free open source software to minimize the overall cost.

Keywords—Smart home, Smart Socket, Sensor Network,

ZigBee, Energy Monitoring, Intelligent Control and IoT. Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposed system.
proposed in this paper. The block diagram of the whole system
I. INTRODUCTION is shown in Fig. 1. Not only all devices are reconstructed to
According to less and less natural resources available, more support DC power supply and enhance their performance but
concerns are put on using more green energy and reducing also more sensors and smart devices are integrated to increase
power wasting. One possible way is to increase the power the intelligence, comfortability and safety of user houses or
efficiency. Alternatively, an easy solution is to focus on buildings. Through the help of necessary converter / inverter,
Demand-side Management to help users properly allocate their all power sources can be converted to be DC for all devices to
energy consumption and thus increase sustainability of the leverage the benefit of DC micro-grid. To realize Home
smart grid as well as reduce overall operational cost and Energy Management System (HEMS), networked appliances
carbon emission levels [1,2]. The existed electrical utility with control /monitor capabilities and home network without
infrastructure was constructed more than 100 years ago which new wiring are indispensable [5]. Besides, wired protocol is
is vulnerable and inefficient. Most of today's electrical loads, no longer used in the proposed system to simplify the overall
such as lighting, adjustable speed motors, brushless DC communication structure. All devices are online and
motors, computing and communication equipment, are more connected though Zigbee, Wi-Fi and 3G/4G mobile
compatible with DC power [3]. Moreover, most distributed communication to fit the future IoT (Internet of Things)
renewable energy generators (DREGs) produce DC voltage. structure. A mobile device instead of an embedded system [4]
Thus DC power has great potential for increased compatibility is used as the home gateway to link all smart sockets and
with high-penetration, distribution-connected solar PV and intelligent sensors to cloud database and then not only all
other DREGs. It is shown that more than 10% energy may be information can be accessed online but also all devices can be
saved by replacing the current inverter based solar PV remote-controlled when necessary.
utilization approach with DC power distribution system [1].
An integrated power monitoring system was successfully The detail of the proposed system is discussed in Section II.
developed for AC system [4]. To make the system even more Experimental results are revealed in Section III and finally a
efficient and fitting into the future market trend, a brand new conclusion is given in Section IV.
DC power monitoring system along with sensor network is
 II. PROPOSED STRUCTURE
A. System Architecture

All home appliances are connected to the power grid

through smart sockets which sense the supplied voltage and
current to calculate the consumed power. Furthermore, a
switch is inserted between the input and output ports to
breakdown the power supply in case of overload or over
temperature for security concern. In addition, an alarm will be
issued in the building and the warning message will be
delivered to the corresponding users through wireless
communication to prevent any unsafe condition from
happening. The users can also access all the devices and
sensors off-site. They can turn all the home appliances on and
off. Even, the usages of the appliances can be scheduled in
advance for power or cost saving. Moreover, the dimming and
color of light can be controlled to create better atmosphere for
living and delude the possible intruders from breaking in. All
the real-time information about power consumption,
temperature and humidity will be transmitted wirelessly and
stored in the cloud server. The detail statistics can also be
provided by the cloud database to show users the power
consumption pattern and temperature/humidity variation
inside the building. According to different electricity rate for
peaking and non-peaking hours, the users can easily reduce
the cost for electricity bill through appliance usage
rescheduling. The air conditioners can be turned on before the
users reach homes to realize more comfortable living
environment and be turned off automatically during office
hours for power saving. The operation modes of home Fig. 2 Block diagram of smart socket and sensors.
appliances can be further optimized according to the measured
temperature and humidity. and humidity sensor is adopted [9]. The operation of air
For device-to-gateway transmission, Zigbee is adopted due conditioner and dehumidifier can be programmed accordingly
to its large node capacity, low cost and low power [6]. The to properly control the room temperature and humidity to offer
detail of each block will be explained in the following the users the most comfortability. The indoor illuminance is
subsections. measured by a photoresistor and the light can be dimmed
accordingly to provide better illumination and more energy-
B. Smart Sockets and Sensors saving. The color of light can also be adjusted by users
through graphical user interface (GUI) of mobile devices to
The schematic of the smart socket is depicted in Fig. 2. A achieve better living atmosphere.
8051-based system-on-chip (SoC) solution CC2530 from TI [7] The dimension of the smart socket is merely 6.6cm Ø 3.5cm
is adopted as the core of smart socket. It’s equipped with IEEE Ø 1.8cm which is small enough to be embedded into regular
802.15.4 RF transceiver for Zigbee, RF4CE applications and socket on the wall. The full power consumption of the socket
low-power wireless sensor networks. It needs very few is as low as 29.35 mW which is much insignificant compared
external components and can be built with very low total bill- to that consumed by the monitored home appliances. Also,
of-material cost. Furthermore, it has various operating modes more functionality and flexibility are provided than a
and suited for systems with ultralow power consumption. conventional infrared remote controller [10] used to switch the
For power monitoring, a current shunt TI INA226 with an socket and set the schedule. For heavy load monitoring, a solid
I2C- or SMBUS-compatible interface is used. It monitors both state switch is used instead for the smart socket and the
a shunt voltage drop, bus supply voltage and enables direct dimension becomes 11cm Ø 5cm Ø 3cm which is still small
readouts of current in amperes and power in watts [8]. enough to be embedded into the wall.
A switch is inserted in the power transmission path of the
socket to shut down the home appliance connected when C. Home Gateway
irregular situations happen. It can also be scheduled to be on
or off to reduce the unnecessary power consumption and the The home gateway is realized with a mobile device instead
risk of electric spark or short circuit while no user is at home. of an embedded system as in the previous version [4] for cost-
For environment sensing, Aosong DHT11 digital temperature saving. There’re billions of mobile devices, such as smart
 Fig. 4. (a) Structure and (b) mapping of an exemplified group.

Fig. 5. Detail power consumption information among groups and appliances.

Fig. 3. User interface of home gateway, interface even friendlier than before, another remote access
App is created to help users check the status of the intelligent
phones or pads, are produced per year and many of them are buildings. When necessary, they can use the App to turn on or
weeded out by consumers to pursue new models. A lot of off the appliances under control. The diming and color of the
electronic garbage is generated. It simply wastes our precious light can also be set through this App. The operation
natural resource on earth. For resource recycling, any mobile
conditions and schedules of all appliances can be easily
device able to install the composed App can act as the home
programmed to offer the most convenience to the users.
gateway to help users collect all power consumption and
sensing information at home. By reusing the out-of-date mobile
devices, the hardware cost of home gateway becomes almost
zero. Since the users are much familiar with their mobile III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
devices the Apps, the learning curve for using home gateway To ease the control and monitoring, the home alliances are
can be substantially shortened. However, mobile devices grouped according to the rooms they are allocated in. Through
usually don’t support Zigbee protocol. A coordinator bridging the remote control App, users can select the group they would
Bluetooth and Zigbee communication protocols is designed to like to check and the corresponding information will be
help mobile devices access all smart sockets and sensors
revealed as shown in Fig. 4(a). The exemplified mapping of
through Zigbee interface. The handy user interface of home
gateway is illustrated in Fig. 3. Through the touch screen of the home appliances in a specific group is illustrated in Fig
home gateway, users can freely read or set the required 4(b). All management is done through the App graphical user
information, such as power consumption, temperature/humidity, interface. When selected, the detail power consumption
illuminance and the light dimming/color. statistics among different groups and appliances can be seen,
as shown in Fig. 5. From the corresponding pie or bar chart,
D. Cloud Server and End-User Control Device the users are able to realize which appliances consume the
most power and are possibly replaced with more efficient ones
A free open source database MySQL is installed in the for energy saving.
cloud server. All the information collected by home gateway More delicate control can be applied to some appliances.
is uploaded to the database through Wi-Fi or 3G/4G mobile Fig. 6(a) shows the color adjustment of a lamp and the
communication. The users can query the database online with corresponding results are revealed in Fig. 6(b). It greatly
any desktop, laptop, smart phones or pads. To make the simplifies the appliance setting. The temperature and humidity
 an alarm message will be sent to the corresponding user.
Furthermore, a buzzer attached to the socket will be activate to
warn the users at home. When necessary, the user can activate
the camera of the home gateway to get the rea-time video
streaming to watch the in-house condition for security check.
Finally, the error power measurement of smart socket is
measured to be less than 0.1%. On average, 10~15% power
consumption can be saved if the home appliances, especially
the air conditioner, audio, video and lights … etc., can be
properly set and scheduled.

IV. CONCLUSION
Not only all devices but also the users are connected through
wireless communications to ensure the best security and
comfortability of the building monitored by the proposed
system. 10~15% power saving can be achieved for the single
demo room with proper setting and scheduling. In the future, a
larger building equipped with the proposed system will be
tested to verify the robustness and efficiency of the system. The
cooperation with Foxconn Technology Group in intelligent
Fig. 6. (a) Setting and (b) results of lamp color.
building monitoring is ongoing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to express their deep appreciation
to Taiwanese Ministry of Education (MOE) for the
financial support to implement the overall system.

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