  The main objective of this work is to design and construct a microcomputer
based system: to control electric appliances such as light, fan, heater,
washing machine, motor, TV, etc. The paper discusses two major approaches to
control home appliances. The first involves controlling home appliances using
timer option. The second approach is to control home appliances using voice
command. Moreover, it is also possible to control appliances using Graphical
User Interface. The parallel port is used to transfer data from computer to the
particular device to be controlled. An interface box is designed to connect the
high power loads to the parallel port. This system will play an important role
for the elderly and physically disable people to control their home appliances
in intuitive and flexible way. We have developed a system, which is able to
control eight electric appliances properly in these three modes.

Human-Computer Interaction