International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering

Abstract: Growing cities mean more apartments and offices sit empty during work hours or vacations, making break-ins a real problem. Sure, CCTV cameras and motion alarms exist everywhere now, but honestly? They mostly just record stuff passively or beep after someone’s already inside. You end up with terabytes of useless footage nobody watches, plus everyone feels weird about cameras recording them 24/7. There’s got to be a smarter approach.
Our solution started simple: what if your floor mat could think? We built this thing using cheap IoT parts from Amazon and AliExpress. Basically, there’s a pressure sensor hidden in a regular-looking floor mat at the entrance. Step on it, and a Force Sensitive Resistor notices. But we didn’t stop there—there’s also an infrared motion detector watching the same spot. Why both? Because my cat weighs enough to trigger pressure sensors, and shadows can fool motion detectors. The Arduino Uno microcontroller waits until BOTH sensors agree someone’s actually there before doing anything.
Only then does an ESP32-CAM module wake up and snap pictures. Those images get crunched through OpenCV running Local Binary Pattern Histogram face matching—we fed it photos of everyone who lives there plus some random faces for testing. The ESP8266 NodeMCU chip grabs the ”recognized” or ”stranger alert” result and pushes it through n8n workflows straight to your Telegram app. Your phone buzzes within seconds.
We ran this through its paces with 200 staged intrusions. Different times of day, various lighting situations, people wearing hats, you name it. Got 94.2% correct identifications, and the whole chain from footstep to phone notification averaged 2.8 seconds. Maybe five or six false alarms total across all those tests. The best part? Camera only runs when someone’s actually at the door, so no creepy always-on recording. Works great for regular houses, dorm rooms, small startups—anywhere you can stick a mat by the door.

Index Terms: IoT Security, Smart Home Systems, ESP32-CAM, Face Recognition, Intru- sion Detection, n8n Automation, Telegram Bot.

Downloads: | DOI: 10.17148/IJARCCE.2025.1412141