A Review of Home Automation Systems and Communication Protocols, Case: Comparison of Suitable Home Automation Systems for Research Project Purposes in Residential Buildings PDF

Over half of the global population lives in cities, and people spend 90 percent of their time in indoor environments. Broadly viewed indoor environment comprises of several main elements: the physical building, architecture, thermal conditions, indoor air quality, acoustics, lighting, maintenance and hygiene of indoor air and potable water. In addition, it is very personal how people perceive indoor environment, especially thermal conditions. Therefore, it is important for the inhabitants to control their indoor conditions. The latest state of the art home automation systems enable to control individual apartment indoor conditions in residential buildings. The human behavior has a strong influence on the performance of the residential buildings and this aspect becomes more sensitive with low energy buildings. This paper presents an overview of previous research on intelligent buildings, building automation technologies, control methods and user perceptions. Also, the paper presents the example of modern individual smart metering and control implementation in Espoo, Finland. Finally, home automation systems, including sophisticated individual smart metering, control and security options, were comparatively reviewed, in order to select a suitable system for piloting in the SENER-project 2013 – 2015 in Mannisto, Kuopio, Finland. Männistö suburb is a residential development for senior citizens and the development project is coordinated by the City of Kuopio. The conclusions of this review will lead to a more comprehensive understanding of how a building should answer the user's needs and reflect upon the objectives of the service innovation piloting SENER-project.