IoT based Home Automation system consist of a servers and sensors. These servers are remote servers located on Internet which help you to manage and process the data without the need of personalized computers. The internet-based servers can be configured to control and monitor multiple sensors installed at the desired location.

Controller: The Brain of Your System

The main controller or the hub is the most essential part of your Home Automation system irrespective of whether you connect single or multiple sensors in your home. The main controller or the hub is also referred to as gateway and is connected to your home router through the Ethernet cable. All the IoT based sensors transmits or receive commands through the centralized hub. The hub in turn receives the input or communicates the output to cloud network located over the internet.

Due to this kind of architecture, it is possible to communicate with the centralized hub even from remote and distant locations through your smartphone. All you need is just a reliable internet connection at the hub location and the data package to your smartphone that helps you connect to the cloud network.

Most of the smart home controllers available in the market from several manufacturers cater to all three widely used protocols of wireless communication for Home Automation: ZigBee, Z-Wave and Wi-Fi.

Smart Devices: The Sensory Organs of Your Home

The IoT based home automation consist of several smart devices for different applications of lighting, security, home entertainment etc. All these devices are integrated over a common network established by gateway and connected in a mesh network. This means that it gives users the flexibility to operate one sensor based followed by the action of the other. For e.g., you can schedule to trigger the living room lights as soon as the door/windows sensor of your main door triggers after 7pm in the evening.

Thus, all the sensors within a common network can perform crosstalk via the main controller unit. As shown in the figure, some of the smart sensors in home automation acts as sensor hubs. These are basically the signal repeaters of signal bouncers which that are in the midway between the hub installation location and the sensors that are at a distant location. For such long distances, these sensor hubs play an important role to allow easy transmission of signals to sensors that are far away from the main controller but in closer proximity to the sensor hub. The commonly used sensor hubs in IoT based Home Automation system are Smart Plugs.

Wireless Connectivity: How the Internal Communication Occurs

Most of the IoT based Home Automation systems available today work on three widely used wireless communication protocols: Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Z-Wave

The ZigBee and the Z-Wave controllers are assigned a network ID which is distributed over other sensors in the network. The communication amongst devices take place in a mesh topology where there is no fixed path for the signals transmitted from the controller to the sensors and vice versa. Depending on the availability of the shortest path the signal from the controller will travel to the target sensors either directly or through signal hops. If any intermediate sensor in the pathway is busy or occupied the signal will trace another path within the mesh network to reach the destination. Note that sensors with different Network IDs cannot communicate with each other over common channel