Every system is moving towards software integration. From home security to entertainment, the “Smart Home” is inevitably in our future. A Smart Home encompasses hardware and software integration for one purpose: to aid home life. This is the focus of our ECE 2804 project; our semester project aims at building a Smart Home of the future.

Our home has three categories: intrusion detection, appliance control, and a weather station. With intrusion detection, we can arm and disarm an intruder-alert system using one tool: Facial Recognition. With our own smartphone app, we can receive an alert on our phone, detect an intruder, and disarm the alarm using Facial Recognition. Likewise, we can use the smartphone app to control appliances in the home. Using MIT’s application creation program, we can turn on and off appliances through our phone application. This application interface displays the temperature and brightness outside.

Gluing this project together is the Arduino Mega Microcontroller. Using UART communication, as well as programming logic, we can control the security system, appliances, and facilitate bluetooth communications through this microcontroller. By engineering electrical components together, we created a Smart Home of the future, and one that you will likely see in a few short years.