IRJET- Raspberry Pi and NodeMCU based Home Automation System

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (IRJET) E-ISSN: 2395-0056
VOLUME: 06 ISSUE: 08 | AUG 2019 WWW.IRJET.NET P-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2019, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.34 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 543
Raspberry Pi and NodeMCU based Home Automation System
Nikhesh Muralidharan
UG Scholar, PSG College of Technology
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ABSTRACT:- This project presents the overall design of
Home Automation System (HAS) with low cost and wireless
system. The system is designed to assist and provide support
in order to fulfil the needs of elderly and disabled at home.
The switch mode is used to control the home appliances. The
design remains the existing electrical switches and provides
more safety control on the switches with low voltage
activating method. The switch statuses are synchronized and
the user interface indicates the real times statuses of the
switches. The system is intended to control electrical
appliances and devices in the house with relatively low cost
design, user-friendly interface and ease of installation.
Keywords: Home Automation, Low Cost Design, Wireless
1. INTRODUCTION
Home automation has been on a rise since the start of
21st century. However, the first designed automation
system dates back to 14th century where Heron of
Alexandria where he installed an automatic door that
works on the basis of steam accumulation. Automation
refers to the transfer of the tasks performed by humans to a
set of technological elements. Home Automation is the
process of automating the home by controlling the home
appliances over remote control or controlling the
appliances over a set of pre-defined conditions which
actuates the appliances. The inclusion of control in the
automation system, allows to decide on the development of
a process, manipulating certain variables to get these or
other variables to act in the desired way. Today’s home
automation contributes to the increase in the quality of life,
makes the distribution of house more versatile, changing
environmental conditions by creating different predefined
scenes and makes the home more functional by allowing
the development of domestic, professional and leisure
under one single roof.
It is estimated that by 2022 there will be over 50 billion
interconnected devices [1]. The consequence of the
increase in internet clients, and thus the increase in devices
connected to the Internet is the adoption of IPv6 (Internet
Protocol version 6), because each device needs the unique
IP address to provide internet connectivity. The use of IPv6
provides, in theory, 3,403 × 1038 unique addresses. Due to
the extremely large amount of data (Big Data concept) the
sensors collect in real time, they are in most cases stored
and processed on a Cloud [2]. Their processing gives us a
much more detailed insight into how things around us
work, where problems arise, and where and how to react.
The IoT already transforms our everyday life since many
objects are equipped with miniature identification devices
or machine-readable identifiers.
1.1 PROPOSAL
This project forwards the design of home automation
system using the Raspberry Pi herein after called as RPi, a
credit card sized computer and Node MCU. The RPi, acts as
the server connecting to the internet provides the access to
control the home anywhere from the world. A set of Node
MCU’s installed all over the house, one in each room with
predefined static addresses. Whenever a command is
issued, the command flows through the Rpi and reaches the
particular addressed NodeMCU and actuation occurs. The
real-time feedback is provided from the NodeMCU using the
current sensor becoming a closed loop. The overall
proposal is shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.Proposal – Flowchart.
1.2 NODE RED TOOL
Node-RED is an open source flow based development
tool for the integration of IoT hardware devices and APIs
[3]. The system contains nodes that are represented by
appropriate icons. It can be operated by drag and drop or
by importing JavaScript code. The node provides different
functions, such as to monitor the flow as the debug out
node, or to read and write with GPIO pins of Raspberry Pi
as the Raspberry Pi node. Created flows are stored using
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). Node-RED enables
developers to wire up input, output and processing nodes
in order to create flows for data processing, controlling
things, or sending alerts [4]. It works on the following
principle: it enables the connection of web services or
customizes nodes to one another or to things, in order to
perform functions such as sending sensor data via e-mail
or to services like Twitter, easily performing complex
analysis, etc.

Node-RED has three basic components (Fig.2):
1. Node Panel,
2. Flow Panel,
3. Info and Debug Panel.
Fig. 2.Node-RED Editor.
1.3 RASPBERRY PI
The RPi is a series of small single-board computers
developed in the United Kingdom by the RPi Foundation to
promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools
and in developing countries. The original model became
far more popular than anticipated, selling outside its target
market for uses such as robotics. It does not include
peripherals (such as keyboards and mice) and cases.
However, some accessories have been included in several
official and unofficial bundles. The Raspberry Pi 3 shown in
Fig. 3 is the third-generation Raspberry Pi released in
February 2016. This model has following characteristics
[5]:
1. Quad Core 1.2GHz Broadcom BCM2837 64bit CPU,
2. 1GB RAM, BCM43438 wireless LAN and Bluetooth
Low Energy (BLE) on board,
3. 40-pin extended GPIO,
4. 4 USB 2 ports,
5. 4 Pole stereo output and composite video port,
6. Full size HDMI,
7. CSI camera port for connecting a Raspberry Pi
camera,
8. Micro SD port for loading your operating system
and storing data,
9. Upgraded switched Micro USB power source up to
2.5A.
Fig. 3.Raspberry Pi.
Initially, the RPi has to be loaded with any of the
Raspbian operating system. This can be done by burning
the image of the operating system over the SD Card and
loading it over the Rpi. Later on, the following packages
have to be installed over the Rpi.
1. Node-RED package for user front end interface,
2. Apache Server package – For Rpi to act as Server,
3. Mosquitto MQTT Server package – For the
interaction between the NodeMCU and Rpi,
4. NGROK package – Since the Node-RED user
interface is available only on the local network, for
accessing it over the Internet, tunneling is required
which is provided by a 3rd party application named
NGROK.
1.4 HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION
The hardware components used are
1. NodeMCU,
2. Relay,
3. Current Sensor and
4. RPi.
NodeMCU and the Rpi are connected wirelessly by
feeding the IP address of the RPi to the NodeMCU by
programming. NodeMCU and the relays are connected by
wire. Relays of 3.3 V specification are used since the
NodeMCU works on the voltage range of (0 – 3.3) V and
hence the maximum voltage that can be outputted and fed
to the relay is 3.3 V.

Fig. 4.Node MCU Pinout
The signal outputs are taken from the GPIO pins of
the NodeMCU shown in Fig. 4 and connected to the “signal”
pin of the Relay Module shown in Fig. 5. Since the relay has
to switch the component ON when the signal is given
through the Node MCU, the 220V component has to be
connected across common (C) and Normally Open (NO)
pins.
Fig. 5.Relay Pinout
Fig. 6. shows the pinout of the current sensor. The
Load has to be connected on the left two pins, +5 V and the
Ground is provided and the output is taken via the middle
pin on the right side.
Fig. 6.Current Sensor Pinout
1.5 SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION
Initially the Apache setup has to be installed on the
RPi and it has to be enabled. The status of the Apache2
Server is shown in Fig. 7. The Mosquitto MQTT Broker is
installed over the Apache2 Server shown in Fig. 8.
Fig. 7. Apache Server Status
Fig. 8. Mosquitto MQTT Broker Status
Once the installation of the Apache Web server
and the broker has been completed, Node-RED interface
has to be setup according to our need. The starting up of
Node Red is shown in Fig. 9.
Fig. 9. Node-RED Status
After the Node-RED setup has been completed, the
back end programming for the user interface can be done
using the Node Red application by opening it in the
browser under the 1880 port on the local host. The back
end programming in the Node Red is shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 10. Node-RED Backend Programming
The NGROK application can be used for the
application of tunneling the specific port on our local host
to the internet. In this case port 1880 of our local host is
port forwarded. Fig. 11. shows the web address that can be
used to access the port 1880 of the local host over the
internet. It is provided under the “Forwarding” option that
specifies the web address as http://9041a202.ngrok.io.
Fig. 11. NGROK Application
The Node MCU is programmed using the Arduino
IDE such that it has a wireless communication with the RPi.
This can be established by feeding the IP address of the RPi
into the NodeMCU through the Arduino Ide while
programming it. The IP Address of the RPi can be
determined by using the command “ifconfig” under the
name “inet” as shown in Fig. 12.
Fig. 12. IP Address Determination
1.6 RESULTS
The implementation of this project was done with two
NodeMCUs, one each for each room with 2 appliances.
However, it can be extended over many rooms. The Fig. 13.
and Fig. 14. shows the generated user interfaces on the
web browser. The URL link can be obtained from the
NGROK Application.
Fig. 13. Room 1 Control Interface
The user interface of the room 1 is shown in Fig. 13.
R1 C1 refers to Room 1 Component 1 and R1 C2 refers to
Room 1 Component 2. When the any of the component is
switched on, the corresponding gauge indicates the status
of the component indicating if the component is working
or not.
Fig. 14. Room 2 Control Interface
The user interface of the room 2 is shown in Fig.
14. R2 C1 refers to Room 2 Component 1 and R2 C2 refers
to Room 2 Component 2. When the any of the component
is switched on, the corresponding gauge indicates the

status of the component indicating if the component is
working or not. The room selection can be done using the
strips at the left top button indicated in the below Fig. 15.
Fig. 15. Room Selection
The first image on the Fig. 16. Shows that the LEDs
are switched off when the switches are in off position.
When the R1 C1 is switched on shown in second image of
Fig. 16. the corresponding LED is switched on. The signal
given to the LED, when given to the relay(s) controls the
component(s).
Fig. 16. Real Time Interface
2. FUTURE SCOPE
The future scope of this project will be the inclusion
of the security aspects and provide make sure
authenticated user only can control the devices. The
reliability and the cost have to be further decreased. This
can be done only by customizing the Raspberry Pi board
according to our requirements which can be easily done by
using the schematics of the Raspberry Pi and the Node
MCU and editing it via software like the Eagle Professional
PCB software. The fabrication cost can be further cut down
during the mass production of the boards. Thus, Home
automation systems with Security enabled customized
boards can have a great impact on the market and will
prove to be of great assistance.
3. REFERENCES
[1] E. Park, Y. Cho, J. Han, and S. J. Kwon, “Comprehensive
Approaches to User Acceptance of Internet of Things in
a Smart Home Environment,” IEEE Internet of Things
Journal, pp. 2342-50, 2017.
[2] S. H. Shah and I. Yaqoob, “A survey: Internet of Things
(IOT) technologies, applications and challenges,” IEEE
SEGE, pp. 381-5, 2016.
[3] Node-RED guide, Web site: http://noderedguide.com/
[4] G. Gardasevic, H. Fotouhi, I. Tomasic, M. Vahabi, M.
Bjorkman, M. Linden, “A Heterogeneous IoT-based
Architecture for Remote Monitoring of Physiological
and Environmental Parameters,” 4th EAI International
Conference on IoT Technologies for HealthCare,
Angers, France, Oct. 24-25, 2017.
[5] Raspberry Pi, Offici Web site:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/

IRJET- Raspberry Pi and NodeMCU based Home Automation System

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