Smart Office: A Voice-controlled Workplace for Everyone

Home automation and the concept of Internet of Things (IoT) have been existing for more than a decade, with billions of devices connected to the internet. The conventional home automation system allows users to control household appliances such as lights, air-conditioning, surveillance camera etc. via smartphone applications, webpages and control panels. One of the major drawbacks is with the operation efficiency, where people would still need their hands on the physical interfaces to access the system. It could be quite inconvenient for specific groups such as the elderly and disabled people, who will not benefit much from such systems. In light of this, the project proposes a methodology and design of a voice-controlled environment with emphasis on speech recognition and voice control based on Amazon Alexa and Raspberry Pi. In this implementation, office users can easily control their office appliances with voice commands, where as the model can be implemented for smart home users as well. The proposed voice-controlled implementation comprises eight main features: 1) Control of wired electrical appliances; 2) Control of Radio Frequency (RF) and Infrared (IR) appliances; 3) YouTube connected entertainment system; 4) Digital memo; 5) Face recognition attendance taking system with SQL database; 6) Security surveillance; 7) Room occupancy detection; 8) Telegram-based voice-controlled text messaging. The proposed system not only saves time but also bring convenience to people.