Arduino Home Automation Projects: Automate your home using the powerful Arduino platform.

For this first project, we will need Arduino boards, PIR motion sensors, and some XBee modules and XBee shields, depending on the number of sensors you want to have in your system. For just one sensor, you will need the following components:

Note that I added the link to the components I used for this project as a reference, but you can also choose to use other components.

The motion sensor needs to have three pins: two for the power supply and one signal pin. It should also use a 5V voltage level to be compatible with the Arduino Uno board that also operates at 5V.

For the XBee module, I used a Series 1 XBee module, 1mW, with a trace antenna (which means it doesn't require any external antenna). You could also use a module with an external antenna, but you would then have to connect the antenna to the module. I used Series 1 XBee modules for this project as they are easier to use than Series 2, which have functionalities we do not need for this simple project. This module has a range of about 100 meters without obstacles.

You will also need to connect your XBee module to your Arduino board. For that, each of my motion sensor modules will use an Arduino XBee shield from Sparkfun, but you can use other brands as well. It just needs to make the connections between the XBee module and the Arduino board.

Finally, you will need a way to communicate with these XBee modules from your computer. I used another XBee module (also Series 1, 1mW, with a trace antenna) connected to an XBee explorer board from Sparkfun, which is basically a USB interface board where you can plug any XBee module. I used the following components for the module connected to the computer:

On the software side, you need to have the latest version of the Arduino IDE installed on your computer. For this project, the Arduino IDE 1.0.5 was used.

You will also need the aREST library for Arduino. You can find this library at the following link:

https://github.com/marcoschwartz/aREST

To install the library, extract all the files in a folder named aREST (or create this folder if it doesn't exist yet). Then, place this folder in your /libraries folder inside your main Arduino folder. You will also need to have a web server installed and running on your computer so that you can use the web interface that we are going to develop at the end of this chapter.

To configure your XBee modules, you will also need to have the XCTU software installed. You can find it at the following URL:

http://www.digi.com/products/wireless-wired-embedded-solutions/zigbee-rf-modules/xctu

The hardware configuration of this project is not really complex. For each motion sensor module you want to build, you'll need to do the following steps. The first one is to plug an XBee module on the XBee shield. Then, you need to plug the shield into your Arduino board, as shown in the following image:

Now, you can connect the motion sensor. It has three pins: VCC (for the positive power supply), GND (which corresponds to the reference voltage level), and SIG (which will turn to a digital HIGH state in case any motion is detected). Connect VCC to the Arduino 5V pin, GND to Arduino GND, and SIG to Arduino pin number 8 (the example code uses pin 8, but you could also use any digital pin). You should end up with something similar to this image:

You will also need to set a jumper correctly on the board so we can upload a sketch. On the XBee shield, you have a little switch close to the XBee module to choose between the XBee module being connected directly to the Arduino board serial interface (which means you can't upload any sketches anymore) or leaving it disconnected. As we need to upload the Arduino sketch first, you need to put this switch to DLINE, as shown in this image:

You will also need to connect the XBee explorer board to your computer at this point. Simply insert one XBee module to the board as shown in the following image:

Now that this is done, you can power up everything by connecting the Arduino board and explorer module to your computer via USB cables.

First off, you are going to leave XBee aside and simply check if the motion sensor is working correctly. What you will do in the first sketch is print out the readings from the motion sensor on the serial port. This is the complete code for this part that you can just copy and paste in the Arduino IDE:

// Simple motion sensor
int sensor_pin = 8;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  
  // Read sensor data
  int sensor_state = digitalRead(sensor_pin);
  
  // Print data
  Serial.print("Motion sensor state: ");
  Serial.println(sensor_state);
  delay(100);
}

Let's see what this code does. It starts by declaring the pin on which the sensor is connected, in our case 8. In the setup() function of the sketch, we initialize the serial connection with the computer, so we can print out the results on the serial monitor.

Then, in the loop() part of the sketch, we read out the state of the motion sensor using a simple digitalRead() command, and store that result into a variable. This state is then simply printed out on the serial port every 100 ms.

You can now upload the sketch to your Arduino board and open the serial monitor. This is what you should see:

Motion sensor state:0
Motion sensor state:1
Motion sensor state:1
Motion sensor state:1
Motion sensor state:0
Motion sensor state:0

If you can see the state of the sensor changing when you wave your hand in front of it, it means that the sensor is working correctly and that you can proceed to the rest of the project.

You are now going to modify the sketch slightly so that it can transmit the state of the sensor to a central interface running on your computer. However, you not only want to transmit the state of the motion sensor, but also an ID identifying the sensor that is detecting the motion. Programming the detector starts by importing the right libraries:

// Libraries
#include <aREST.h>
#include <SPI.h>

The aREST library implements a REST API for Arduino. REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer, and is widely used in web applications such as Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. In our case, we will use this library to standardize the communication with the central interface that will run on the computer. In this project, the REST commands will be sent over the XBee connection that acts as a serial port from the Arduino point of view.

After importing the libraries, you need to declare the sensor pin and the ID of the module as follows:

// Motion sensor pin and ID
int sensor_pin = 8;
String xbee_id = "2";

After this, you can create the instance of the aREST library that will handle the requests coming from the graphical interface:

// Create aREST instance
aREST rest = aREST();

In the setup() function of the sketch, the first step is to start the serial communication. Be careful here, as the speed of the serial object has to be the same as the speed of your XBee modules, which is 9600 bauds by default:

// Start Serial
   Serial.begin(9600);

You can also set the ID of the module:

   // Give name and ID to device
   rest.set_id(xbee_id);

Note that if you are configuring more than one sensor, you need to change the ID of each sensor you are configuring. Now, thanks to the aREST library, the loop() part of the sketch is pretty simple. We simply have to handle the incoming requests from the computer that will come via the XBee serial interface:

void loop() {
  
  // Handle REST calls
  rest.handle(Serial);
  
}

Now, the sketch is ready to be used.

You can upload the sketch to your Arduino board by making sure that the switch is still set on DLINE. Once this is done, you can test the code locally via the serial monitor of the Arduino IDE. Open the serial monitor, make sure that the serial speed is set to 9600, and type the following:

/digital/8/r

This is the REST command to read a digital value from pin number 8 and return the value, which is exactly what we want to achieve. You should see the following data being returned, depending on the current state of the sensor:

{"return_value": 0, "id": "2", "name": "", "connected": true}

What we are interested in is the return_value field, which contains the result of the digitalRead() function. Try to wave your hand in front of the sensor to see if the return value changes accordingly. Note that the returned data is in the JSON format, which will be really important later when we are going to process this information and display it.

Now that you are sure that the code is working, you can switch over to XBee communication. For that, simply put the switch next to the XBee module to UART. Now, the serial port of the Arduino board is directly wired to the XBee module.

To continue further, insert the XBee module you want to modify in the USB XBee explorer and open the XCTU XBee tool. Click on the top-left button to add a new device and select the USB explorer serial port. You should get the following screen:

You will then be able to change the PAN ID of your device. To configure all the modules in your network, just repeat the procedure for each XBee module.

Now that the hardware is completely configured, you can build the server-side code to read data from all your motion sensor modules. For this project, I used two modules only, but you can use more modules for the project.

As for many web applications, our control center for the XBee motion detectors will be built using four different languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. We are going to use HTML and CSS to design the interface itself, JavaScript to handle the different elements of the interface and make the link with PHP, and finally use PHP to communicate directly with the XBee modules.

The first step is to design the interface. We'll basically have several blocks on our page, one block corresponding to one XBee module. For example, this is the HTML code for the first block:

<div class="sensorBlock"><span class="sensorTitle">Sensor 1</span>
     <span class="display" id="display_1"></span>
</div>

Now, you can have a look at the JavaScript code that will handle the different elements of the interface. Note that all this code is included inside a dedicated JavaScript file. What we are going to do here is check the value of the sensor at regular intervals via a digitalRead() command. To do this, we have to call a PHP file with the correct command as an argument:

$.get( "xbee.php", {command: "/digital/8/r"}, function( data ) {

The result from the PHP file is some string data formatted in the JSON format. To actually create a usable object from this string, we can use the parseJSON() function of jQuery:

json_data = jQuery.parseJSON(data);

Now, we have a JavaScript object that has the same properties as the data fields inside the JSON container. For example, to get the ID of the sensor module, you can just type:

var sensorID = json_data.id;

Now that we know which sensor returned some data, we can read the return_value field inside the JSON object to know the status of the motion sensor on this module. If this value is equal to 0, we set the background color of the display block of this sensor to gray. If it is equal to 1, it means that some motion was detected. If this is the case, we change the background color to orange as follows:

if (json_data.return_value == 0){
  $("#display_" + sensorID).css("background-color","gray");
}
else {
  $("#display_" + sensorID).css("background-color","orange");
}

Let's now see the details of this PHP file that is called every time. We saw in the JavaScript code that the PHP file also receives an argument called command. This variable is retrieved inside the PHP file by:

$command = $_GET['command'];

Inside this file, we also need to include the php_serial class:

include "php_serial.class.php";

We also need to declare the right serial port for your XBee explorer device:

$serial_port = "/dev/cu.usbserial-A702LF8B";

You now need to configure the different settings of the serial connection we are about to open with the board:

$serial = new phpSerial;
$serial->deviceSet($serial_port);
$serial->confBaudRate(9600);
$serial->confParity("none");
$serial->confCharacterLength(8);
$serial->confStopBits(1);

Now, you can actually open the connection:

$serial->deviceOpen();

We can now send the command and read the answer:

$serial->sendMessage($command . "\r");
$answer = $serial->readPort();

Now, we close the serial connection:

$serial->deviceClose();

Finally, we send back the data that was read:

echo $answer;

We are now ready to test our project. You can of course find all the code for this part on the GitHub repository of the project at the following website:

https://github.com/openhomeautomation/arduino-home-automation/tree/master/chapter1

Make sure that your web server is running, and that all the files of the project are placed inside a folder in your web server's main folder. You can now head over to this folder, usually accessible by typing localhost in your favorite web browser. Open the HTML file, and you should see something similar to the following screenshot:

Note that on this example screenshot, the second sensor I had in my system already detected some motion. Now try with your sensors by waving your hand in front of them; you should instantly see that the state of the sensor changes on the interface.

Of course, by modifying the HTML and JavaScript code, you can easily modify this interface to adapt it for more sensors.

Also, be aware that these modules don't need to be connected to your computer directly once the code is loaded onto them. You can just disconnect them from your computer and power them using a simple battery pack (the Arduino Uno board, for example, accepts up to 12 V of power on its jack input).

Note that you can also access this interface from a mobile phone or tablet, just by accessing the localhost folder on your computer. Of course, your computer has to be powered (and the web server running) to access the interface.

Let's now summarize what we did in this first project of the book. We built XBee motion sensors that are based on Arduino, and learned that you can put them wherever you want in your home. They communicate with a central interface where you can see the status of every sensor live.

Of course, we could have used other wireless communication devices for this project, such as Wi-Fi. However, XBee modules are very energy efficient compared to Wi-Fi modules, so it completely makes sense to use XBee for this project, as you might want to power these motion sensors from batteries.

Let's see what the major takeaways of this chapter were. We first chose the components for our project, and built our fist XBee-based motion sensor using Arduino and a PIR motion sensor. We also connected an XBee module to our computer via a USB so it can communicate with the other modules.

Then, we tested our motion sensor module by first testing the PIR sensor connected to the Arduino Uno board. We also tested the sketch at this point that we used to access the board via XBee.

Finally, we built a web-based interface to visualize the information coming from the different XBee motion sensors live. This interface was tested with two modules, but it is made to easily extend to many more XBee modules.

In the next chapter, we are going to tackle another huge field of home automation: controlling lights. And for this project, we won't be using XBee, but we are going to interface Arduino with a Wi-Fi chip to control lights from any mobile device.