A mobile-based home automation system

The rapidly advancing mobile communication technology and the decrease in costs make it possible to incorporate mobile technology into home automation systems. We propose a mobile-based home automation system that consists of a mobile phone with Java capabilities, a cellular modem, and a home server. The home appliances are controlled by the home server, which operates according to the user commands received from the mobile phone via the cellular modem. In our proposed system the home server is built upon an SMS/GPRS (short message service/general packet radio service) mobile cell module and a microcontroller, allowing a user to control and monitor any variables related to the home by using any Java capable cell phone. This paper presents the design and implementation of AT modem driver, text based command processing software, and power failure resilient output for a microcontroller to facilitate in sending and receiving data via the cell module, together with the design of Java application to enable the cell phone to send commands and receive alerts through the cell module