The smart home is now an established area of interest and research that contributes to comfort in modern homes. With the Internet being an essential part of broad communication in modern life, IoT has allowed homes to go beyond building to interactive abodes. In many spheres of human life, the IoT has grown exponentially, including monitoring ecological factors, controlling the home and its appliances, and storing data generated by devices in the house in the cloud. Smart home includes multiple components, technologies, and devices that generate valuable data for predicting home and environment activities. This work presents the design and development of a ubiquitous, cloud-based intelligent home automation system. The system controls, monitors, and oversees the security of a home and its environment via an Android mobile application. One module controls and monitors electrical appliances and environmental factors, while another module oversees the home’s security by detecting motion and capturing images. Our work uses a camera to capture images of objects triggered by their motion being detected. To avoid false alarms, we used the concept of machine learning to differentiate between images of regular home occupants and those of an intruder. The support vector machine algorithm is proposed in this study to classify the features of the image captured and determine if it is that of a regular home occupant or an intruder before sending an alarm to the user. The design of the mobile application allows a graphical display of the activities in the house. Our work proves that machine learning algorithms can improve home automation system functionality and enhance home security. The work’s prototype was implemented using an ESP8266 board, an ESP32-CAM board, a 5 V four-channel relay module, and sensors.
SHAS-IoT: Smart Home Automation System (SHAS) using Internet of Things (IoT) to Improve Safety and Security