Design and Development of Air Temperature

and Relative Humidity Monitoring System With

AVR Processor Based Web Server
Mitar Simić
NORTH Point Ltd, Member of the NORTH Group
Trg Cara Jovana Nenada 15/8, 24000 Subotica
Republic of Serbia
[email protected]

In [13] authors described impact of relative humidity

and temperature on books stored in library. They presented
Abstract — In this paper improved design of previously the wireless system which can remotely measure and
developed system for temperature and relative humidity control relative humidity and temperature of library in real
measurement and data acquisition is described. Hardware of time.
the system is extended with Arduino Uno and Ethernet In greenhouses, maintaining a higher internal as
Shield boards. SHT11 sensor is used for obtaining compared with external temperature can produce better
information about air temperature and relative humidity.
growing conditions. A computer-based system which
Storing the results is on the micro SD card in CSV file. Main
software improvement is adding of embedded Web server provides control, coordination and visualization of
which enables immediate access to sensor readings through humidity and temperature in a greenhouse was presented
Internet. The designed system is tested under different in [14].
conditions and in all tests the system worked stable and In [15] the results of experiments in exposure chamber
accurately. to determine the effects of different ambient air
temperature and relatively humidity on the performances
Keywords — data acquisition, microcontroller, relative of passive diffusive samplers for measuring nitrogen
humidity, temperature, sensors, web-server. dioxide (NO2) in the outdoor environment are presented.
I. INTRODUCTION Monitoring and control of temperature and relative
humidity is also very important for storing and
The weather or climate plays an important role in transportation of medicinal products [16].
human life. The thermal comfort of human being is known Based on applications of described systems it is
to be influenced mostly by air temperature, humidity, obviously that development of reliable relative humidity
radiation, activity level, air flow and clothing thermal and temperature measurement system with data acquisition
resistance [1]. is very important and has wide range of application in
Indoor air quality is a concern for energy and industrial and nonindustrial applications. Various
environmental researchers as well as consumers. Humans temperature and relative humidity data loggers are
spend up to 90 percent of time indoors in winter, so it is available on the market with main characteristics: small
very useful to know that things like carpeting and furniture dimensions and power consumption, wide measurement
can improve quality of indoor environment. Recently ranges, adjustable sampling time between readings, the
many homeowners have added vapor barriers, insulation, ability to hold readings and display maximum and
weather stripping and caulk to their homes to effectively minimum readings, storing results on removable disks,
retain desired air temperature and reduce outdoor air Windows software (optional), etc.
infiltration [2]. Indoor temperature conditions and From the beginning monitoring systems have request
moisture were measured and analyzed for more than 40 for remote access to measured values. In last decade, the
homes in different climate regions of the United States [3]. most common way of remote access became
Monitoring of environmental parameters is very microcontroller which runs a embedded web server and
important in various applications and industrial processes. user has access to sensor readings through Internet. More
Researchers all over the world are trying to monitor the can be found in [17]-[24]. Some solutions as [25] are
environmental parameters of temperature, humidity and commercial products with a much higher price than system
pollutant gases more precisely in real time. For example, proposed in this paper.
in [4] systems for monitoring temperature, humidity, and Main aim of this work is embedding a PC based web
airflow in data centers are presented. Various design and server into the microcontroller with temperature and
application of data loggers for similar purposes can be relative humidity measurement in low-cost but reliable
found in literature [5-12]. system. System presents redesign of system reported
earlier [26]. All good features of previously developed
system are implemented with optimization regarding
dimensions and power consumption.
This work was financially supported by European Commission in the
framework of the FP7 project SENSEIVER, grant number 289481.
 II. EMBEDDED WEB SERVER
At the beginning, general web servers were developed Ethernet Arduino Ethernet
for general-purpose computers. They typically require a Shield Board
fast processor, huge amount of memory and other
resources. Microcontroller based control systems also have Arduino
Internet Uno Board
a request for remote access to the device from a web
browser but limitations of available resources in that kind
of systems, brought to the development of special type of ATmega128 SHT11
web server, called an Embedded Web Server [27].
An embedded web server is a microcontroller that LCD RTC
contains an Internet software suite as well as application uSD
code for monitoring and controlling systems. Embedded Keyboard
web servers are integral part of an embedded network and Control Board
paves way for faster time to market products [27].
Figure 2. Block scheme of the system
Figure 1. shows typical embedded web server
architecture [27]. Sensor device SHT11 [30] is attached directly to the
microcontroller ATmega128. SHT11 is a Sensirion’s
family of surface mountable temperature and relative
humidity sensors. The sensors integrate sensor elements
plus signal processing and provide a digital output. No
additional calibration is needed. Relative humidity is
measured by capacitive sensor element while band-gap
sensor is used for temperature measurement. The SHT11
has operating range of temperature between -40 and
+123.8 °C and range for relative humidity between 0 and
100 %RH.
Measured values of relative humidity and temperature
are stored on 2 GB micro SD card. FAT16 file system is
used to allow manipulation of file with results on PC and
off-line processing. The main advantage for using a micro
Figure 1. Embedded Web Server Architecture SD card as data storage system is the ease of transferring
data directly to other electronic devices which support the
III. DEVICE STRUCTURE FAT format as a file system.
Proposed structure of device for measurement and data Device also has three LEDs for signalization of regular
acquisition of temperature and relative humidity with (green LED) and critical conditions (two red LEDs for low
built-in web server is presented in Figure 2. and high alarm).
System consists of three boards: Control board, Arduino A prototype hardware outcome of Control board with
Uno and Arduino Ethernet Shield board, and measuring attached SHT11 sensor is shown in Figure 3.
device - sensor SHT11.
The hardware of control board has been built around a
microcontroller (AVR ATmega128 [28]) that interfaces
with user via a display and a keyboard. The
microcontroller is used with a supply voltage of 5 V and
an external quartz crystal of 16 MHz. Other parts of
control board are micro SD card, real time clock DS1307
[29] and LCD. Alphanumeric LCD is used for displaying
results and configuration on the field.
Real time clock DS1307 with backup battery is used to
provide time measuring. Time and date values are used for
presentation on display and for additional information for
every result in report on micro SD card. These values are
Figure 3. A prototype hardware outcome of Control
also sent to web page with results of measurement.
board with connected SHT11 sensor
Keyboard with two navigation and two confirmation
keys is connected to the control board to ensure easy Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board based on the
manipulation through menu system for configuration and ATmega328. It has 14 digital input/output pins, 6 analog
measurements. Menu system is based on finite state inputs, a USB connection, a power jack, a 16 MHz
machine and it can be accessed by external keyboard with ceramic resonator and a reset button [31].
two navigation keys (Up and Down) and two confirmation The Arduino Ethernet Shield allows an Arduino board
keys (OK and Esc). Device also has an ON/OFF key for to connect to the internet. It is based on the Wiznet W5100
turning on and turning off device (toggle operation). Ethernet chip. The Wiznet W5100 provides a network (IP)
stack capable of both TCP and UDP. It supports up to four
simultaneous socket connections [32].
 The Arduino Uno (a) and Ethernet Shield (b) boards are
presented in Figure 4.

(a) (b)
Figure 4. (a) Arduino Uno board (b) Arduino Ethernet Figure 7. Testing of the system with mobile phone
Shield board Mobile phone browser view of the SENSEIVER data
PC browser view of the SENSEIVER [33] data logger logger web page is shown in Figure 8.
web page is shown in Figure 5. Date, time, relative
humidity and temperature are presented. Default value for
refresh time is 5 seconds. It is planned that in next revision
of the system refresh time of web page can be adjustable
regardless sampling time of measurements.

Figure 8. Mobile phone browser view of the SENSEIVER

data logger web page
System described in this paper also can be used as
standalone device without connection with embedded web
server. In both cases, device can be used in two modes for
data collecting: continuous and manual. In continuous
mode, the device collects data from sensor automatically
with defined sampling time and stores it on micro SD card.
Figure 5. Browser view of the SENSEIVER data logger In manual mode, the user has an option to manually
web page choose the moment of recording the results. More details
A prototype hardware outcome of complete system is about implemented options can be found in [26], where
shown in Figure 6. results of comparison with commercial temperature and
relative humidity data logger are presented.
As reliability test of redesigned system, during more
than 7 hours indoor temperature and relative humidity
were monitored. Sampling time was set to 2 seconds so
more than 8600 samples were stored. Size of generated
report is 319 kB. Offline processing of generated report
can be easily performed and curves of temperature and
relative humidity changes are presented in Figure 9.
40
Temperature [°C]
38 Relative Humidity [%RH]

36

34

32

30

28

Figure 6. Hardware outcome of device for temperature

26
and relative humidity monitoring with embedded web
server 24
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000
Sample
System is also successfully tested with access via
mobile phone as shown in Figure 7. Figure 9. Curves of indoor temperature and relative
humidity changes during more than 7 hours
 IV. CONCLUSION [12] M.B. Waghmare, P. N. Chatur, “Temperature and Humidity
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