An Implementation and Design of a Digital Light Switch of Smart-Home Based on MQTT Broker

Home appliances are designed and manufactured for the market. Most users find that APPs are installed on smartphones or tablets to control home appliances with individual APP. Even light-bulbs with different brands or models need exclusive control software to corresponding light-bulbs. Thus, the smart and intelligent technology for smart-home is difficult to use due to different brands home-appliances from different manufactures. It lacks a standard to coordinate the control way like traditional light-bulbs-based E27 specs. For the light-bulbs of home appliances as an example, the traditional light-bulbs-based E27 lamp-holder have different fixtures and power-supply. Thus, new light-bulbs of home appliances for smart-home need a complex control-way besides electronic power to achieve smart functions and remote-control based on APPs on users' smart-phone. In this research, we try to integrate the internet of thing and message queue telemetry transport (MQTT) to design a mechanism and to implement a prototype web system to achieve an instant and visualized digital light switch of smart-home to solve the problems. For the validation of this research, we used a NodeMCU-32 microcontroller unit as a micro-controller to integrate with WS2812B LED strips to design light tube and light-bulb as the proof of concept (PoC) to demonstrate it in smart-home.