Smart Home Management Concept

Development of a prototype of a Smart Home management system.

Client Profile

SaM Solutions sees a huge opportunity in modern embedded development for Smart Home solutions. As a developer company, SaM Solutions is eager to investigate new possibilities and combine and apply the necessary knowledge.

Challenge

Most existing systems have closed (or partially closed) management protocols and GUIs. This means that any adaptation can produce high costs and require a lot of time. In addition, there is a problem with unifying various control equipment connected to different interface buses and protocols.

Solution

SaM Solutions created a prototype of an efficient, user-friendly interface with the ability to make quick additions and changes. The SaM team used the Qt library to develop a quick and easy, scalable, cross-platform interface.

In addition, SaM Solutions created a system that brings different control protocols to a single standard. To unify the communication protocols, the SaM team developed several plug-ins that convert ModBUS, CAN, and 1-Wire protocols to D-Bus. Further work by GUI is underway in accordance with the D-Bus protocol. The created architecture greatly simplifies the writing of the logic and the interface.

Working with a video stream received from the house camera and broadcasting it to the control screen and mobile devices is another extension of the prototype. SaM Solutions tested several options to display video.

Technologies

Operating system: ARM Linux 32-bit / PtxdistBSP, Android
Programming languages: C/C++, BASH
Project management tools: JIRA
Technologies: ModBUS, CAN, GStreamer, GCC cross compiler for ARM
Other tools: Qt4/Qt5, ModBUS, CAN, 1wire, D-Bus, cross-compilation

Success

By the end of development, SaM Solutions designed and created a Smart House display stand (prototype) with the following features:

• Doors and windows control
• Temperature measurement in different parts of the house
• Lighting control
• Receiving and broadcasting a camera stream
• Motion-triggered gate control (camera stream used)