Project Home Security is a hardware and software combination project that detects the presence of an intruder outside the front door of a house and immediately sends an email alerting the user about the activity with a picture of the person standing outside.   

Image: Ultrasonic sensor placed outside the door to detect activity 

Image: Screenshot of the email sent by the server with a message alerting the user, with a picture taken by the camera


Image: Control System inside the house, near the front door (the TV monitor could be used for surveillance purposes)

This project uses an ultrasonic sensor, wires, Arduino, raspberry pi, ethernet cable and an interface for Pi/Arduino for initial setup. The ultrasonic sensor may be replaced by a body motion sensor (for shorter range setup), which actually was used for this project initially. However, as the connecting wires get longer- the body motion sensor starts acting in unanticipated ways.  

Image: I added a camera interface for taking picture of the intruder  

The Arduino board establishes a connection with the ultrasonic sensor. As the distance read by the sensor gets below a certain threshold, it prints a message which is then received by the raspberry pi connected to the Arduino via a USB serial port. 

Image: I added LEDs for taking picture at night  

As the raspberry receives the message, an SSMTP messaging protocol relays that message to an email address. The user can add that email account to their existing Gmail app and receive notifications about the front door activity in real time. 

 

Here are some pictures that were taken during the development stage of the product: