What are the key technologies of smart home?

What are the key technologies of smart home?

Smart home mainly refers to the intelligentization of household appliances in residential homes, achieving more personalized program control functions and building interactive systems for appliance equipment and daily control and management.

Improving the safety, convenience, and comfort of home life, such as remote switch control, indoor temperature regulation, and door security. Smart home technology mainly involves communication technology, intelligent control technology, and sensor technology.

(1) Communication Technology

The network structure of smart home includes the home LAN and connection to the external network. Wireless network-based home LAN has advantages such as easy networking and mature technology. Currently used wireless networking technologies include infrared, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and ZigBee.

Infrared technology is generally suitable for point-to-point communication, with advantages such as low power consumption, mature technology, and low device cost, making it very suitable for short-distance communication of mobile terminal devices.

However, infrared technology requires that the communicating parties must be within line of sight range for communication, meaning there should be no obstacles between the communicating parties; otherwise, communication will fail.

Bluetooth technology was jointly designed by Ericsson, Nokia, IBM, Intel, and Toshiba, mainly to meet the requirements of short-range wireless communication.

It supports point-to-single or multi-point communication and has a simple hardware structure. Wi-Fi technology is also a short-range wireless communication technology, mainly used in the composition of small-scale LANs.

It can achieve interconnection and communication between devices such as computers and smartphones. Since the Wi-Fi protocol complies with the requirements of the IEEE 802.11 standard, there are more devices related to it, and with the popularity of home wireless networks, small-scale LANs constructed through Wi-Fi routers are also increasing.

ZigBee originates from the communication method between bee colonies, and in data communication technology, ZigBee is a type of wireless communication technology characterized by low power consumption, suitable for data communication between various electronic devices.

Connecting to the external network mainly involves mobile communication networks, used for remote interaction between smart mobile terminals and smart home appliances. The data interaction between smart mobile terminals based on mobile communication networks and the home LAN is the core part of the entire smart home system.

Mobile communication networks are currently in the era of 5G technology, with faster download and upload speeds. Widely used communication protocols include the HTTP protocol and SOAP protocol. The HTTP protocol, i.e., Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is mainly aimed at achieving data interaction between servers and browsers.

The HTTP protocol has characteristics such as simplicity, flexibility, and statelessness. The related development technologies are also very mature, and achieving data interaction is not difficult and meets the basic requirements of the internet.

(2) Intelligent Control Technology

Intelligent control technology is an important component of smart home and is closely related to the essence of smart home development, which aims to be more intelligent, convenient, and comfortable, and to meet people’s needs.

Therefore, home control should better conform to people’s living habits and adapt to changes in the environment and habits.

Based on these considerations, some mature technologies have been integrated with the main body of intelligent control technology to enhance user experience, such as applying graphical user interfaces, speech recognition technology, image processing technology, environmental monitoring technology, and data mining technology to smart home control, realizing personalized control methods such as voice control and visual control.

Voice control uses human language to control smart devices, as language is the most familiar and comfortable way for humans to express themselves.

By recognizing voice commands, extracting the control objects and specific operation information from the commands, and matching them with the information and operations of smart home appliances stored in smart mobile terminals, the corresponding control commands for smart home appliances are obtained and sent to the respective smart home appliances.

Based on image processing technology, controllable devices can be obtained through devices that capture images, and users can add devices through the control interface and view and change the status of devices, achieving a “visible” effect.

Environmental monitoring involves multiple indicators such as light, temperature, and humidity in the home environment. Sensor data is collected to judge whether indicators need to be changed based on control algorithm conditions such as threshold values and adaptive parameters, such as opening a humidifier to increase indoor humidity when the humidity is low, or turning on air conditioning to adjust indoor temperature when it is too high.

(3) Sensor Technology

Sensor technology is an important aspect. With a variety of sensor types available, considering the interaction of multiple sensor data is necessary for better controlling a specific device.

The main sensors include temperature sensors, humidity sensors, CO2 concentration detection sensors, light sensors, infrared sensors, infrared beam technology devices, cameras, door magnets, window magnets, smoke sensors, and gas detection sensors, which can collect indoor temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration, light intensity, and personal identity information.

Among these, the collection of information such as temperature, humidity, and light intensity is mainly done through sensors to sense environmental information in the room, in order to provide a comfortable environment for residents.

Infrared sensors can collect personal information to ensure user safety. They detect moving human bodies within the detection range by detecting the infrared emitted by the human body, converting the changes in emitted infrared into voltage signals in a non-contact manner.

Infrared beam technology devices are installed on the inside and outside of room entrances, each including an infrared beam receiving module and a transmission module, arranged on both sides to judge the entry and exit of people through conduction and cutoff of light.

Cameras can capture environmental images to obtain controllable devices. Users can add devices through the control interface and view and change the status of devices.

CO2 concentration detection sensors, smoke sensors, and gas detection sensors can detect the concentration of CO2, smoke, and gas in the environment. The intelligent control algorithm compares the concentration values with threshold values to determine whether there are safety hazards, ensuring the safety of the home and its occupants.