Design and Implementation of a Universal Integrated Wi-Fi Controller for Smart Buildings

Abstract

Internet of things (IoT) technologies deal with the control over communication networks for different applications of different fields, such as residential buildings, commercial buildings, agricultural farms, transport vehicles, and manufacturing industries. Wi-Fi is a family of protocols for wireless local area networks, based on the IEEE 802.11 standards. Recently, a microcontroller with a built-in Wi-Fi module can be considered one of the most recent technologies of IoT. Nevertheless, most of the available research on Wi-Fi controllers is dedicated to a specific application. This paper aims to design and implement a universal hardware platform for a Wi-Fi controller that can be integrated with multiple applications for residential and commercial buildings. The proposed system is based on Ep8266 NodeMCU with a built-in WiFi module. Input modules and output modules of the proposed system are designed to be suited for various voltage levels. The proposed system was implemented and evaluated for multiple applications. The first application deals with controlling residential building loads with an embedded web server on the Wi-Fi controller and web browser on smartphones. The second one is related to integration with the remote access control application of commercial buildings, which is based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) cards with Wiegand protocol and based on User Datagram Protocol (UDP) with Internet Protocol (IP).