A Home Automation system will allow you to automate things you want done on a regular basis or have an action occur when a particular event takes place. Home Automation is a central system that can control and create communication between nearly all aspects of your house. This includes lighting, heating and air conditioning, music, television, security system, gas & electric fireplaces and watering systems. Others are much more advanced like sensing the presence of the person in a room and adjusting light ambiance, the temperature in the room, the volume of the music, according to different factors like the day of the week and the time. The home controller application described in this application note allows the user to program on and off times for up to sixteen devices, using a 2 x 16 liquid crystal display and five push buttons. A built-in light sensor can be used to turn on lights at dusk, and turn them off at dawn. The home controller is designed to facilitate experimentation with home automation using the PIC16F877A. In addition to the PIC16F877A, the board will accept any other PIC MCU that shares the same pin out, such as the PIC18F452. Therefore, experimenters may expand on the application using the higher performance of the PIC18 family of parts without changing the hardware.
The specific PIC microcontroller (MCU) used should be selected based on RAM, ROM, operating frequency, peripheral, and cost requirements of the particular application. The reader may implement the home controller as is, or adapt the circuits and firmware to other applications.
