Abstract
Home automation is a fast and growing industry in South Africa, because in recent years almost everything home and office electrical and electronics appliances are been connected to the internet and human mobile devices. There is an increase in demand of time from the working class and hence the busy time schedule. This necessitate the home automation and monitoring systems which enable homeowners to remotely monitor and control appliances in their houses and offices without being present in the device physical location. The designed system host the integrated intelligent unit functionalities that enable communication between the controller and remote end-user units of the system. It is important to ensure that home automation systems have a low cost to enable user adoption. Home automation systems should also incorporate latest technology, portability and also have internet connectivity capabilities. This paper proposes a design of low-cost home automation system that incorporates internet access and delivers internet of things (IoT) connectivity services in a smart home application. The designed system provides access to an internet connected home automation systems. The system is accessible via mobile devices and provides remote access to home appliances. In conclusion, during measurement and testing of the designed system, device full duplex connection for one round trip was less that 5seconds to relay a message packet between the transmitter subscriber device and the publisher receiver device. The performance of the designed device is satisfactory at first iteration prototype designed.