Microcontroller And Smart Home Networks

Over recent years industries have faced the problem of how to connect devices to ‘speak’ to each other with minimum wiring. Philips Semiconductors faced this problem when they needed to connect many ICs together. The Automotive Industry faced the same problem when it needed to connect tens of microcontrollers in each car. Recently, with smart homes, the problem has started to be part of each home. For instance, you may want to build your smart home with accessories from different manufacturers and you want the devices to ‘speak’ to each other. Added to that, you may want to control them from a central App or voice assist. Solutions for this problem started with the introduction of Inter Integrated Circuits (IIC) and Controller Area Networks (CAN). Both solutions are wired networks that allow ICs and microcontrollers to be connected in a network to communicate together. In smart home automation, a number of common smart home automation protocols that allow different devices to speak and communicate together have appeared during the last few decades. Some of the smart home protocols come under the umbrella of what is called the “Internet of Things (IoT)”. The proposed protocols can be grouped into wired networks e.g. X10, UPB; wireless or radio networks as ZigBee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth; or dual (wired and radio) such as Insteon. This book introduces to the reader some of the most popular Microcontroller and Smart home networks. The book covers in detail the following protocols:• I2C• I3C• CAN• ZigBee• ZigBee Pro• Z-Wave• Bluetooth Wi-Fi, WiMax and Insteon are part of our companion book “Serial Communication Protocols and Standards”. This book gives detailed comparisons between the various protocols. To complete the knowledge of the reader, the book gives in the last chapter a short summary on the protocols that we did not fully cover in this volume: Ethernet, Thread, Insteon, X10 and UPB.

Data communication standards are comprised of two components: The “protocol” and “Signal/data/port specifications for the devices involved”. The protocol describes the format of the message and the meaning of each part of the message. To connect any device to the bus, an external device must be used as an interface which will put the message in a form which fulfills all the electrical specifications of the port. These specifications are called the “Standard”. The most famous such serial communication standard is the RS-232. In IT technology, Communication can be serial or parallel. Serial communication is used for transmitting data over long distances. It is much cheaper to run the single core cable needed for serial communication over a long distance than the multicore cables that would be needed for parallel communication. It is the same in wireless communication: Serial communication needs one channel while parallel needs multichannel. Serial Communication can also be classified in many other ways, for example synchronous and asynchronous; it can also be classified as simplex, duplex and half duplex. Because of the wide spread of serial communication from home automation to sensor and controller networks, there is a need for a very large number of serial communication standards and protocols. These have been developed over recent decades and range from the simple to the highly complicated. This large number of protocols was necessary to guarantee the optimum performance for the targeted applications. It is important for communication engineers to have enough knowledge to match the right protocol and standard with the right application. The main aim of this book is to provide the reader with that knowledge The book also provides the reader with detailed information about:- Serial Communication- Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART)- Universal Synchronous/Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (USART - Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) - eSPI- Universal Serial Bus (USB)- Wi-Fi- WiMax- Insteon The details of each technology including specification, operation, security related matters, and many other topics are covered. The book allocates three chapters to the main communication standards. These chapters cover everything related to the most famous standard RS-232 and all its variants. Other protocols such as: I2C, CAN, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, and others, are the subject of the authors separate book “Microcontroller and Smart Home Networks”.

Smart Home Automation with Linux and Raspberry Pi shows you how to automate your lights, curtains, music, and more, and control everything via a laptop or mobile phone. You'll learn how to use Linux, including Linux on Raspberry Pi, to control appliances and everything from kettles to curtains, including how to hack game consoles and even incorporate LEGO Mindstorms into your smart home schemes. You’ll discover the practicalities on wiring a house in terms of both and power and networking, along with the selection and placement of servers. There are also explanations on handling communication to (and from) your computer with speech, SMS, email, and web. Finally, you’ll see how your automated appliances can collaborate to become a smart home. Smart Home Automation with Linux was already an excellent resource for home automation, and in this second edition, Steven Goodwin will show you how a house can be fully controlled by its occupants, all using open source software and even open source hardware like Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

Written specifically for readers with no prior knowledge of computing, electronics, or logic design. Uses real-world hardware and software products to illustrate the material, and includes numerous fully worked examples and self-assessment questions.

Using clear and accessible language this book examines the growing field of ‘smart technology’ for the home. The author first introduces the field before exploring the various background issues, including how the home differs from other environments. He then shows how these background issues affect the design and usability of these technologies. A detailed case study looks at the use of handheld and wearable digital technology in sheltered housing. The last section examines what it is like to live in a smart home and why they have so far failed to reach the levels of success originally predicted. Invaluable reading for anybody interested in designing smart technologies for the home.

This hands-on introductory guide will quickly show how to program embedded devices using the .NET Micro Framework and the Netduino Plus board, and then connect these devices to the Internet using Pachube, a cloud platform for sharing real-time sensor data.

Interconnecting Smart Objects with IP: The Next Internet explains why the Internet Protocol (IP) has become the protocol of choice for smart object networks. IP has successfully demonstrated the ability to interconnect billions of digital systems on the global Internet and in private IP networks. Once smart objects can be easily interconnected, a whole new class of smart object systems can begin to evolve. The book discusses how IP-based smart object networks are being designed and deployed. The book is organized into three parts. Part 1 demonstrates why the IP architecture is well suited to smart object networks, in contrast to non-IP based sensor network or other proprietary systems that interconnect to IP networks (e.g. the public Internet of private IP networks) via hard-to-manage and expensive multi-protocol translation gateways that scale poorly. Part 2 examines protocols and algorithms, including smart objects and the low power link layers technologies used in these networks. Part 3 describes the following smart object network applications: smart grid, industrial automation, smart cities and urban networks, home automation, building automation, structural health monitoring, and container tracking. Shows in detail how connecting smart objects impacts our lives with practical implementation examples and case studies Provides an in depth understanding of the technological and architectural aspects underlying smart objects technology Offers an in-depth examination of relevant IP protocols to build large scale smart object networks in support of a myriad of new services

Internet of Things (IoT) is a recent technology paradigm that creates a global network of machines and devices that are capable of communicating with each other. Security cameras, sensors, vehicles, buildings, and software are examples of devices that can exchange data between each other. IoT is recognized as one of the most important areas of future technologies and is gaining vast recognition in a wide range of applications and fields related to smart homes and cities, military, education, hospitals, homeland security systems, transportation and autonomous connected cars, agriculture, intelligent shopping systems, and other modern technologies. This book explores the most important IoT automated and smart applications to help the reader understand the principle of using IoT in such applications.