In last few years, wireless systems like WLAN have become very common in home networking. In home automation systems, the use of wireless technologies gives several advantages over wired networks.
1) Lower installation costs: First and foremost, installation costs are significantly reduced since no cabling is necessary. Wired solutions require cabling, where material as well as the professional laying of cables (e.g. into walls) is cost prohibitive.
2) Easy deployment, installation, and coverage: Wireless nodes can be mounted almost anywhere. In adjacent or remote places, where cabling may not be feasible,
e.g., a garden house or the patio, connection to the home network is accomplished instantly by simply mounting nodes in the area. Hence, wireless technology also helps to enlarge the covered area.
3) System scalability and easy extension: Deploying a wireless network is especially advantageous when, due to new or changed requirements, extension of the network is necessary. In contrast to wired installations, additional nodes do not require additional cabling which makes extension rather trivial. This makes wireless installations a seminal investment.
4) Aesthetical benefits: As mentioned before, placement of wireless nodes is easy. Apart from covering a larger area, this attribute helps to full aesthetical requirements as well. Examples include representative buildings with all-glass architecture and historical buildings where design or conservatory reasons do not allow laying of cables.
5) Integration of mobile devices: With wireless networks, associating mobile devices such as PDAs and Smartphones with the automation system becomes possible everywhere and at any time, as a device’s exact physical location is no longer crucial for a connection (as long as the device is in reach of the network).
Challenges of Home automation
Home automation systems face four main challenges; these are high cost of ownership, inflexibility, poor manageability, and difficulty achieving security. The main objectives of that research is to design and to implement a cheap and open source home automation system that is capable of controlling and automating most of the house appliance through an easy manageable web interface to run and maintain the home automation system
