Design and Implementation of a Smart Home Automation System for Energy Efficiency:A Brief Review and Integrated Prototype Case Study

The residential sector represents a significant share of global electricity consumption, necessitating efficient demand-side energy management strategies. Smart home automation systems and home energy management systems, have emerged as viable solutions for optimizing household energy use. This study involves a structured systematic review of research dedicated to these systems (2017–2025) based on the Internet of Things (IoT), utilizing a PRISMA-informed methodology and synthesizing trends in hardware architectures, platforms, and control strategies. Beyond literature synthesis, it develops and evaluates a low-cost, multi-sensor IoT-based prototype integrating environmental and electrical sensing with a hybrid edge-cloud control framework. The system combines local rule-based automation with cloud-enabled monitoring to enhance responsiveness and user interaction. Experimental validation was conducted using five controlled residential mock-up units under staged occupancy and scheduling scenarios over a five-day observation period, demonstrating promising short-term reductions in average daily energy consumption from 5.02 kWh under baseline operation to 2.72 kWh under adaptive automated control, corresponding to 45.8% savings during the test period. The findings highlight that while low-cost IoT systems can achieve meaningful energy savings, most existing studies including the present case are constrained by short validation periods, limited scalability, and lack of standardized benchmarking. This paper provides a structured comparative synthesis of smart home automation and energy management approaches; demonstrates a practical, low-cost multi-sensor architecture; and critically evaluates the limitations of short-term experimental validation. The study indicates the need for long-term real-world occupied deployments, interoperable data platforms, and standardized evaluation frameworks to advance reliable and scalable solutions for smart home energy management.