The use of NFC and Android technologies to enable a KNX-based smart home

In recent years, due the improvement of humans´ living standard, smart homes are receiving an increasing interest. They can provide several useful services such as support for the elderly and disabled people, access control, environmental monitoring, and home automation. Furthermore, with the widespread diffusion of mobile devices (i.e., smartphones, tablets) and their integration with new auto-identification technologies (such as the NFC technology), the need to control and manage the smart home through these devices is increasing. In this context, the main goal of this work is to develop and validate an architecture, both hardware and software, able to monitor and manage a KNX-based home automation system through an Android mobile device in an efficient and safe way. More in detail, a software system able to configure an Android application consistently with the home automation implant was designed and implemented as well as an Android application able to manage the entire home automation system based on the KNX standard. A further Android module, which exploits NFC technology, was developed in order to address the access control issue. A real use case is presented, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed software system.