Abstract
Low-cost video surveillance systems are attractive for Smart Home applications (especially in emerging economies). Those systems use the flexibility of the Internet of Things to operate the video camera only when an intrusion is detected. We are the only ones that focus on the design of protocols based on intelligent agents to communicate the video of an intrusion in real time to the guards by wireless or mobile networks. The goal is to communicate, in real time, the video to the guards who can be moving towards the smart home. However, this communication suffers from sporadic disruptions that difficults the control and drastically reduces user satisfaction and operativity of the system. In a novel way, we have designed a generic software architecture based on design patterns that can be adapted to any hardware in a simple way. The implanted hardware is of very low economic cost; the software frameworks are free. In the experimental tests we have shown that it is possible to communicate to the moving guard, intrusion notifications (by e-mail and by instant messaging), and the first video frames in less than 20 s. In addition, we automatically recovered the frames of video lost in the disruptions in a transparent way to the user, we supported vertical handover processes and we could save energy of the smartphone's battery. However, the most important thing was that the high satisfaction of the people who have used the system.