Introduction
There is an increasing desire in the market for a standards-driven, low-cost, and low-power wireless home automation system. For many entrant systems a smart outlet is usually employed to remotely activate and deactivate the source power feeding into room lamps, personal fans, and consumer electronics. In addition to home automation, consumers are employing an array of low-cost sensors to further enhance their home automation’s autonomous behavior. Silicon Labs has developed a compact and cost-effective smart outlet reference design targeted at these applications. This reference design (see the following figure) features Silicon Labs’ EFR32MG1P232F256GM48 ZigBee Pro Wireless Microcontroller (MCU), the Si7021 temperature and relative humidity sensor. and the Si1141 ambient light sensor. The outlet also features voltage, current, and power measurement capability, as well as current and thermal overload shutdown features. The reference design can be directly integrated into a connected ZigBee home automation application, as shown in Figure 1.2 ZigBee Home Automation with Smart Outlets on page 1. The reference design comes preprogrammed and fully functional out of the box. All hardware design files and firmware application source code are available.