8051 Control your Home appliances using Cortana (Windowsphone 8.1)

Control your home appliances through Cortana which is a personal smartphone assistant for Windowsphone 8.

My previous project uses bluetooth to communicate between the mobile and hardware. It has a lot of disadvantages. The main disadvantage of bluetooth connection is the power drainage on the Mobile. Also every time we need to switch on/off the bluetooth manually since windows phone wont allow it through any api. Another disadvantage is the connection delay. It takes around 1 to 3 seconds to get connected with the hardware from the mobile.

So this time i decided to go with Wifi. Which is always connected to the home wifi network and overcomes all the above disadvantages. For that i decided to use HI-LINK HLK-RM04, which is a "HI-LINK HLK-RM04 Serial Port-Ethernet-Wi-Fi Adapter Module" Check this link for more details about this product. You can buy it from here for just $14.99



This comes with a base board for ethernet connection, since i am going to use wifi connection there is no need for the base board. I am just using the module which is shown below.

You can configure the module through web interface. For setting up the module you need to use it with the base board. Connect the board to your home network through the ethernet cable and type the default IP address of the module which is 192.168.16.254. The username and password is admin. Now change the NetMode to WIFI(CLIENT)-SERIAL and set other details as per the screenshot shown below. But you can use any wifi to serial modules. Check out this link to setup the wifi module.


Circuit Diagram

The circuit diagram is simple, it uses wifi module with an 8051 microcontroller a relay driver and relays.

Cortana
Embedded professionals wont have any idea about Cortana. It is an intelligent personal assistant on the Windows Phone 8.1 operating system. For more details about cortana check this link. Also check this link for integrating Cortana to your wp ap.

MyHome App
My app has an gui for controlling the devices through buttons also. Its also integrated to Contana so you can control all the devices through cortana. Just say "Home switch on the light". Here Home is the keyword which represent my app. So to switch off the light just say "Home switch off the light"

App Demo