Design and Implementation of a Wireless Home Automation Control System with Speech Recognition

Abstract

Home automation systems became one of the most interesting areas for both the construction and the electronics sector. Changing the state of the home appliances easily, scheduling events, and remote control capabilities using high technologies attract modern home residents everyday. This thesis researches the possibilities of applying speech recognition solutions to automated homes. Speech based solutions would provide great benefits especially to disabled or elder people. In addition, wireless devices prevent cabling complications through the walls.

An open source software based on the Hidden Markov Models called Sphinx 4 has been used to realize the speech recognition in this thesis. The speech recognition system has been developed in a Linux PC and a wireless node was attached to it, so that it became a small command center. Another wireless node was connected to a lighting control system and a servo motor so that it became an actuator, wirelessly controlled from the command center. This way the skeleton of a speech based home automation system has been built and verified to work. In the results section, the recognition accuracy analysis, power consumption tests, and range tests were performed to verify the robustness of the system.