Indoor monitoring with BLE in smart home

Abstract

The potential for an energy crisis is extremely real today [1]. Demands have been rising while supply has been struggling to make itself sustainable or renewable [1]. It is affecting us at the world politics level to the monthly household utility bill level. Especially for a city state like Singapore that is dependent on the rest of the world for energy, it is crucial that saving energy is driven into the national consciousness. Therefore, it is inevitable that the world moves towards smarter solutions for energy efficiency. One such initiative is Smart Home solutions. Smart Homes range from security systems to holistic solutions that tap into the infrastructure of the house to provide substantial energy savings. This paper explores a method to make the indoor monitoring system that makes up such smart home solutions, more energy efficient by using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for sensor communications. BLE is known for its low power consumption. A central data hub will be used to collect indoor environmental data. Then, that data will be pushed out to a cloud service for processing and visualisation.