1. Field of invention;
The present invention relates to secure safe and user friendly single unit modular home
automation. More particularly, to methods, to design a modular home automation device that
adapts to existing electrical wiring methods, accepts encoded user instructions from multiple users
via single or different communication mediums that includes wireless interfaces such as secure
IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi communication and or IR communication, and or manually operated
mechanical switches or all.
2. Background of invention with regard to the drawback associated with known art;
Existing Home Automation systems provides single user single communication interface medium
out of available options such as infra red (IR) remote control, RF remote, GSM based or traditional
mechanical switch, with sophisticated relay switching mechanism to operate electrical appliances
in house. Remote controls based on IR and RF have hinderance towards long distance and path
obstacles. Most of home automation systems have a central control box which is connected to by
means of 110 or 220 volt AC wiring to one or more modules distributed throughout the home.
Electrical appliances to be controlled, coupled to these distributed modules and may thus be
controlled from central control box. These systems requires external additional wiring or alterations
to existing house hold wiring system and costs extra to user. In addition, such systems provides
only switch ON and OFF features to limited type of appliances. Also expansion or modification of
such systems is not possible, due to fix operation features for selected electrical appliances. More
over complete system at one time is not affordable by average customer. Traditional Home
Automation systems operates through serial or parallel ports, very rare in todays electronics
products.
Infra Red and Radio Frequency remote control techniques are quite familiar these days. This is
again not much reliable because of dependency on remote control unit. If handheld remote control
unit gets misplaced or lost, then user house hold system gets halted. Similar problem arises if
handheld remote control battery cells discharges. Security is also prime concern with handheld
remote control based IR and RF based Home Automation System. Users do not have choice to
have authorisation mechanism or restricted access for critical household appliances towards
visitors.
From safety perspective, existing relay switching based Home Automation Systems are not user
friendly in terms of electrical control operations. Relays are prone to give sparks, when inductive
loads like fan, tube light, bulb, mixers etc coupled to relay output terminals.
Home Automation system, for average untrained users, still have major gaps to be fulfilled. For
example, Home Automation solution should be cost effective and must have provisions or fallback
strategy so that end user household system remains functional. End user Home Automation should
not pose restrictions and limitations on usage of its features, in case mix users where awareness
level is different between all of them and few choose to have age old household mechanical
switches based electrical system. Most demanding, it should remove any possibility of fire sparks
due to inductive coil based electro-mechanical parts, to avoid any sparking or electrical shock.
Presence of electro-mechanical parts, such as relays, reduces the life of Home Automation system
and increases maintenance cost.
Hence, there is requirement to improve Home Automation Systems to make it affordable to
average house owner and overcomes the shortcoming of existing Home Automation Systems.
OBJECT OF INVENTION
The modular home automation device overcomes the shortcoming of existing home
automation devices by providing multiple communication interfaces to single or multiple
users and is operable by any kind of user independent of literacy level. The invention
pertains to a step ahead in improvements over existing Home Automation systems. One
object of the invention is to provide a single unit modular low cost solutions affordable to average
house-owner. Another object of the invention, to make it independent of literacy level so that every
person in the house can understand and operate it. A further object of the invention, makes it
modular in terms of compatibility to existing electrical wiring system, no new wire need to
be altered or replaced while installing this modular Home Automation device. Yet another
object of the invention, gives user safety feature by providing low voltage physical mechanical
switches with indicators and prevents any risk of shock while touching bare hand or wet hand. Yet
another object of invention provides, feature to remember user commands to restore electrical
appliances state on power resumption which is very common problem with average house-owner.
Moreover major part of the invention is to provides multiple communication interface feature
without need of external additional central control unit or hardware.
A SUMMARY OF INVENTION
[0001] Modular Home automation device, is directed in various aspects to a variety of
improvements in Home Automation, user experience and energy savings. It is a standalone
single unit, coordinates home owner desires of convenience, safety, security, quality and
operating cost. Device uses different types of communication mediums to interact with user,
this gives user a flexibility to overcome restrictions imposed by single type of
communication medium as found with available products in home automation market.
[0002] According to an embodiment, serialiser collects user commands from various
communication mediums and sends to MPU/CPU byte by byte via universal asynchronous
serial interface. Here serialiser converges the user commands stream from wireless
mediums such as wifi and or IR and or mechanical switches.
[0003] According to an embodiment, wifi modules accepts only IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi standard
protocol formatted user commands. where as IR module accepts RC5 encoded user
commands and mechanical switches responds according to user physical switch press
actions.
[0004] According to am embodiment, modules responsible for respective communication medium
such as wifi, IR and or switches, also decrypts the user commands data from standard
protocols. Then expected user commands data is transferred from serialiser to MPU/MCU
byte by byte.
[0005] According to embodiment, Micro controller unit MCU or micro processor unit MPU will
receive user commands data byte by byte through serial communication interface. It
includes method to verify the user command data packet for correctness and expected
protocol format. Method to identify or extract the information about communication medium
used by user to send this command data under processing.
[0006] According to embodiment, further methods implemented to process user data command as
per the communication medium used during reception. Elaborating further, separate
method to process user command if it is received onto wifi communication medium. User
command received via IR, respective method for further processing will be used.
[0007] According to embodiment, methods implemented to process user data command also
capable to identify any error or wrong command and can reject or ignores the unrecognised
user command. Finally, user command processing reaches to completion, user command is
verified, identified, processed and output control signals gets modified accordingly. Final
status control signal also reflected onto status LEDs.
[0008] According to embodiment, method to take backup of last user command in memory. During
startup or power resumption, status is checked and last user command saved in memory
gets processed first. this resumes or restores the last state of output control signals.
[0009] According to embodiment, method to enable or disable user communication mediums.
Makes modular home automation device more responsive, when unused communication
mediums are disabled. Hence no power wastage.
Additional aspects and advantages will be apparent from the following detailed description of
preferred embodiments, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0010] Figure-1 provides the diagrammatic representation of invention depicting
modular home automation device details.
[0011] Figure-2 elaborates method details of handling user commands at modular home
automation device.
[0012] Figure-3 explores much possibilities of how single or multiple users can connect or send
commands to modular home automation device using same or different communication
mediums.
[0013] Figure-4 shows the intermediate state of command processing to provide clear
understanding of restoring user commands on power resumption at modular home
automation device.
[0014] Figure-5 shows mechanism to provide communication medium preferences as per user or
house owner timely needs.
[0015] Figure-6 shows front and side visual impression of modular home automation device.
[0016] Figure-7 shows backside visual impression of modular home automation device.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
[0017] 102 Wi-Fi module conforming to IEEE 802.11 b/g/n provides secure wireless
communication medium, for single or multiple users, to accept commands. Users having
valid login credentials can only connect via wifi communication medium.
[0018] User can interact with modular home automation device using standard IR remote
control. 104 IR receiver filters and receives valid RC5 encoded commands.
[0019] 106 provides safe low voltage operated physical switches, to ease users having traditional
electrical switches experience.
[0020] 108 receives user commands from various mediums 102 wifi 104 IR 106 switches,
enqueue and forwards to 8-bit MPU/CPU over single serial communication interface.
[0021] 110 MPU/CPU gets all the user commands coming from 108 serialiser and before further
processing, stores into 112 memoriser.
[0022] 114 optically isolated electronic protection, isolates 110 MPU/CPU, 102 wifi, 106 IR, 108
switches from 116 high voltage output signals and restricts any hazardous or shocking
impact onto low voltage current modules. This also makes near zero risk of electrical shock
to user while using physical switches.
[0023] Starts state clarifies that modular home automation device is powered up and have
completed its initial startup checks and also ready with correct configuration. At this state
device can verify user connection and can accept commands.
[0024] As soon as module receives commands via any of available mediums such as figure-1 102,
104, 106 etc, any noise with encoded command is filtered out, afterwords validated and
verified for the correctness. if unexpected command is received, it will be ignored without
any notice or indication.
[0025] For the valid command, further identification is performed to know the receiver type. Could
it be wireless wifi, IR and or physical switches. Accordingly command is prioritised and
served by finally setting the requested output control signal ON or OFF.
[0026] Single or multiple users can connect to modular home automation device at any
instance. User command figure-3 302, 304 and 306 could be from single user or multiple
users connected at 302 or 304 or 306 and or all.
a. Commands sent by users of 302 are received at 308 wifi module.
b. Commands sent by users of 304 are received at 310 IR module.
c. Users 306 are interacting through physical switches 312.
d. No matter, from which communication medium 308, 310, 312 command
has received, 314 serialiser forwards all the encoded commands to MPU/CPU.
[0027] In case of power resumption, after main power supply failure, modular home automation
device detects the power up cycle and reads last user command from its memory, followed
by further processing of command and finally setting desired output control signals for
electrical appliances.
[0028] User can enable or disable any of communication medium. Also user is restricted to disable
all the communication medium at a given time, instead at least one remains operational.
This feature reduces power consumption of non-functional or disabled communication
medium and processing. Also in some situations, visitors can be restricted from overriding
the pre-defined setting of output electrical control signals.
[0029] 602 of figure-6 shows low voltage physical mechanical switches with built-in LED indicators.
Low voltage physical mechanical switches act as mechanical input device for user and
showing real ON or OFF state of electrical device or home appliance attached to it.
Because of low operating voltage switches, it is very much safe to operate as compared to
available traditional mechanical home electrical switches.
[0030] 604 of figure-6 providing through hole cut stripes for better quality of Wifi signals. Hence
increases the operational area of control, for wifi based user input devices.
[0031] 702 of figure-7 provides RJ45 connector space for wire connector, which may act as
alternative to debug or repair the module while in live operation at installed location.
[0032] 704 power connector holder for routing wires to electrical devices or appliances. This further
reduces the installation and maintenance cost to customer as compared to existing
traditional mechanical electrical switch board setups.
[0033] 706 keyhole for quick and easy installation. Reduces pre-requirement of civil work at
installation location or site.

We claim:
1 Modular Home Automation device provides method, to accept, decrypt, verify, identify and
prioritises user commands from received data packets incoming through same or different user
communication mediums. thereafter detects and defines actions expected by users by generating
control signals to act upon electrical appliances.
Modular Home Automation device comprises of a 8-bit architecture controller or processor chip,
isolated low and high voltage operating parts and digitally controlled output signals to electrical
appliances.
2 Claim 1 comprising: responsible to prioritise single command out of multiple commands
received at same time, coming from multiple users connected wirelessly, such as IEEE
802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi or Infra red communication and or internet, and or mechanical switches
or all.
3 Claim 1 comprising: to provide method of data reception from various different
user communication mediums connected to low memory footprint processor chip via single
serial interface.
4 Modular Home Automation device provides method, to memorise and schedule users
commands for later action on electrical appliances.
5 Claim 4 comprising: to memorise user preferred commands, for electrical appliances, for
backup in case of main power supply failure.
6 Claim 4 comprising: on main power supply resumption, previously memorised commands
gets restored and user gets same state of electrical control signals as was there before
main power supply failure.
7 Claim 4 comprising: to memorise user commands, modular home automation device
do not have dependency, of external accessory or intermediate device or user
communication medium connectivity, to execute memorised user commands and to act
upon electrical appliances coupled to it.
8 Modular home automation device provides method, for users to opt common single
communication medium out of various and different available communication mediums available
with device.
9 Claim 8 comprising: enable and disable feature for and of each user interface
communication medium to further minimise power consumption when common single
interface is selected.