Wireless Sensor Mesh Network for Irrigation Systems

Pepper Oak Farms, a company that grows their own olives for olive oil and has approximately 40,000 olive trees, is in need of an efficient way to monitor the soil and atmospheric conditions that are critical to the cultivation of their trees. The company at the moment only has two sensors and has to manually place the sensors at different locations to collect data on soil moisture and temperature. This is expensive, time consuming, and a lot of effort on the owner’s part to go out on the fields to collect this data. As a solution, the company would like to create a wireless mesh network with different nodes throughout the land to monitor and collect data from the sensors. The project goals are to implement this wireless mesh network with enough nodes in the network to cover most of the area on the land and for the project to be self-monitored. To help cover costs, we will be using modules that use Zigbee IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocols and standards which are used for low power consumption and have a range of up to 100 meters. The modules will be interfaced with Texas Instrument’s Tiva C microcontrollers that will collect the output of the sensors to be later transmitted to the home network

Smartphone based ubiquitous sensing platform leveraging audio jack for power and communication

With the popularization of smartphones, various smartphone centric ubiquitous sensing applications, which use a smartphone in conjunction with external sensors for data acquisition, processing, display, communication, and storage, have emerged. Because smartphones do not have a universal data interfaces, many ubiquitous sensing applications use the earphone and the microphone channels of the 3.5mm audio interface for data communications so that they can work with various types of smartphones. The earphone channels of the 3.5mm audio interface can only send AC signal out of a smartphone, hence DC power needs to be harvested from the earphone channels. In this research, based on frequency shift keying (FSK) modulation scheme, we have proposed a joint power harvesting and communication technology that can simultaneously harvest power and transfer data using the same earphone channels. The joint power harvesting and communication technology is demonstrated with a prototype system, which can power an external microcontroller and sensors through the 3.5mm audio interface of a smartphone, display sensor measurement results on a smartphone, and control the outputs of the microcontroller from a smartphone. The newly proposed smartphone sensing platform is expected to harvest double or more power from both earphone channels in comparison to single channel harvesting designs and hence has the potential to support more smartphone powered sensing applications. Furthermore, the sensing platform is expected to support a reliable communication with much higher data rate from a smartphone to external sensors than existing designs

Design of an embedded system and cloud backend for remote monitoring of smart traps

The convergence of low cost cloud services, widespread Internet deployment and low cost SOCs gives rise to systems placing the Internet’s vast compute power at the service of simple, everyday devices. Assisted by ubiquitous Wi-Fi deployment and smartphone ownership, a default infrastructure is emerging that supports rapid development of easy to use, low cost, Internet enabled devices. This nascent extension of the Internet into common, everyday devices has been termed the Internet of Things (IoT) and is attracting considerable commercial and academic interest. This paper evaluates the selection and application of IoT technologies to the operations of an existing industry that would benefit from a low cost, remote monitoring system by reducing the cost of delivering their services to their customers. The US pest control industry was selected for analysis as it has a healthy, growing revenue base ($7B in 2013) with a service delivery model that requires expensive manual monitoring (~$45 per inspection) of deployed traps and cages. A prototype system was built entailing a Wi-Fi connected smart rat trap, a cloud based monitoring system and a smartphone app for associating the trap with a Wi-Fi access point.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

PROTOTYPE AIR CONDITIONING MONITORING AND CONTROL SYSTEM FOR SMART CLASSROOM BASED ON THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Electricity wastage is a growing concern, often resulting from human behavior. One common scenario is the continuous operation of a high-powered air conditioner (AC) even when it's unnecessary. Moreover, extended AC usage can accelerate wear and tear, potentially damaging the unit. To address these issues, a remote monitoring and control device based on the Internet of Things (IoT) concept is crucial. This device can connect to smartphones, allowing users to remotely monitor and control AC usage. Through an AC simulator, the system enables monitoring and control via a telegram system linked to the smartphone. Developed using the waterfall method and utilizing the NodeMCU ESP8266 microcontroller, the prototype proves effective in assisting users in monitoring and controlling AC usage. Particularly useful when users are away from the AC location and inadvertently forget to turn it off, the system mitigates unnecessary electricity wastage. By implementing this solution, energy efficiency is promoted, and the lifespan of AC units is extended. With the potential to reduce electricity wastage, this technology contributes to a more sustainable future

A novel virtual reality-based system for remote environmental monitoring and control using an activity modulated wireless sensor network

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019The ability to monitor and control a home environment remotely has improved considerably in recent years due to improvements in the computational power, reduction in physical size, reduced implementation cost, and widespread use of both wireless sensor networks and smart home systems. This thesis presents a remote environment management system that integrated a custom wireless sensor network that monitored environmental factors in multiple locations, a smart system that controlled those factors, and a virtual reality system that functioned as a remote interface with the environment. The resulting system enabled a user to efficiently interact with a distant environment using an immersive virtual reality experience. The user was able to interact with the remote environments by issuing voice commands, performing hand gestures, and interacting with virtual objects. This type of system has applications in many fields ranging from healthcare to the industrial sector. The case study system that was designed in this thesis monitored and controlled the environments of several rooms in a home. A novel approach to modulating the activity of the wireless sensor network was implemented in this system. The rate at which the sensor nodes collected and transmitted data was modulated based on the visibility of the virtual objects called VSNs. These virtual sensor nodes displayed the sensor node measurements in virtual reality. This method was expanded upon using a motion prediction algorithm that was used to predict if the virtual sensor nodes were going to be visible to the user. This prediction was then used to modulate the activity of the wireless sensor network. These activity modulation algorithms were used to reduce the power consumption of the wireless sensor network and thus increasing its operational lifespan, while simultaneously reducing unnecessary RF signals in the environment that can interfere with the operation of other wireless systems. These algorithms would be crucial for systems monitoring complex sensor-rich environments where reducing the data transmitted and extending the system's lifespan was paramount, such as managing the environments of many rooms in a large industrial park or controlling the environments of spacecraft from Mission Control on Earth

Wireless temperature control system and lighting

El TFM consta de diseñar e implementar un sistema de control de temperatura e iluminacion mediante sensores y actuadores

Control Flow Integrity for Real-time Embedded Systems

Devices built on embedded systems are widely used in our daily lives. Nowadays, firmware typically uses C and C++ for efficiency and durability. However, those languages are unsafe which can lead to many software and system security issues. Attackers can easily corrupt a system by issuing various memory corruption attacks on a vulnerable program. Control-flow integrity is one of the most prevalent mechanisms used to protect against memory corruption. Most research papers and prototypes focus on using CFI on high-performance chips such as Intel and ARM Cortex-A. However, many embedded systems targeting time critical services are built on resource constrained devices. Many mechanisms cannot work, or have large runtime overhead, when been applied to those embedded systems. This paper presents work applying a CFI policy on resource constrained systems while sustaining security guarantees. We propose a mechanism for applying control-flow integrity in real-time embedded systems to mitigate memory corruption attacks