International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2017)

Air Quality Monitoring System Based on IoT

using Raspberry Pi
Ashish Jasuja
Somansh Kumar
School of VLSI Design and Embedded system
School of VLSI Design and Embedded System NIT Kurukshetra
NIT Kurukshetra Kurukshetra, Haryana
Kurukshetra, Haryana [email protected]
[email protected]

Abstract—Air pollution is the largest environmental and public without knowing the concentration of particulate matter in the
health challenge in the world today. Air pollution leads to adverse atmosphere is incomplete. Thus, to address this problem, a
effects on Human health, climate and ecosystem. Air is getting system consisting of DSM501A which is a PM sensor is
polluted because of release of Toxic gases by industries, vehicular
being used for monitoring the particulate matter along with
emissions and increased concentration of harmful gases and
particulate matter in the atmosphere. Particulate matter is one of the
the sensors employed for sensing carbon monoxide, carbon
most important parameter having the significant contribution to the dioxide, Temperature, Humidity and barometric air pressure
increase in air pollution. This creates a need for measurement and using raspberry pi which is a low power, less expensive,
analysis of real-time air quality monitoring so that appropriate highly flexible minicomputer is designed [6]. It is a good
decisions can be taken in a timely period. This paper presents a real- platform for interfacing with many devices at the same time.
time standalone air quality monitoring system which includes various Internet of Things and cloud computing are the most
parameters: PM 2.5, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, temperature, emerging technologies. Internet of Things is a concept or a
humidity and air pressure. Internet of Things is nowadays finding paradigm in which without human interruption devices sense,
profound use in each and every sector, plays a key role in our air
identify, process and communicate with each other [7]. Cloud
quality monitoring system too. Internet of Things converging with
cloud computing offers a novel technique for better management of
computing is a practice of consuming the resource of remote
data coming from different sensors, collected and transmitted by low servers such as storage, virtual machines, applications and
power, low cost ARM based minicomputer Raspberry pi. The system utilities that are hosted on internet rather than building and
is tested in Delhi and the measurements are compared with the data maintaining infrastructure for computing in house. Internet of
provided by the local environment control authority and are Things becomes very powerful when converges with Cloud
presented in a tabular form. The values of the parameters measured computing. IoT cloud system provides a view on accessing
are shown in IBM Bluemix Cloud. IoT resources and capabilities in defined API, configuring and
operating it on cloud [8]. The data stored at the cloud can be
Keywords—Air Quality Monitoring, Internet of Things, retrieved any time and the scenarios can be analyzed in a
Arduino Uno, Raspberry pi, cloud computing.
better way leading to the solutions for controlling air
pollution to some extent.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Air pollution is caused due to the presence of particulate
matter, harmful materials and biological molecules in earth Phala, kgoputjo et al [2] presented an air quality
atmosphere [3]. It has adverse impact on living organisms monitoring system (AQMS) which is based on the
such as humans, animals, food crops and can also damage IEEE/ISO/IEC 21451 standard.Concentrations of CO, CO2,
built and natural environment. It may result in allergies, SO2 and NO2, were measured using electrochemical and
harmful diseases such as cardio vascular diseases, lungs infrared sensors. Results are saved in the data server.
diseases and can also cause death. The environment group Xing Liu, Orlando [4] presented a comparative study on
Greenpeace in January released a report that has estimated smart sensors, objects, devices and things in Internet of
every year nearly 1.2 million Indian die because of air borne Things. The authors have also explained the definition and
pollutants [10]. concepts of IoT in various different ways. The differences and
Particulate matter is liquid or solid matter which is similarities between the smart objects, smart things in IoT are
microscopic and suspended in Earth's atmosphere. We are presented in tabular form.
exposed to this particulate matter which is continuously Marinov, Marin B. et al [3] monitors environmental
affecting our heart and lungs. Till now several studies have parameters with amperometric sensors and gas sensors
been done in environment monitoring domain using (infrared) using the PIC18F87K22 microcontroller. Sensor
IoT,Researchers have monitored environmental parameters nodes are set up in different areas for real time monitoring of
like Temperature, Humidity, Barometric air pressure, carbon environment. The results are displayed on the city map.
monoxide, sulfur dioxide but the least attention is paid to the Baralis, Elena et al [11] proposes a business intelligence
measurement of particulate matter [5]. Air quality monitoring engine (APA). The system is designed to aware the public

ISBN:978-1-5090-6471-7/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 1341

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 International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA2017)

about the quality of air being affected by different factors like

pollutants, toxic gases etc. Analysis of air pollution from
different perspectives like meteorological data, pollutants and
traffic data using APA is done. The system helps the people to
realize their activities impact on deteriorating air quality.
Jha, Mukesh et al [7] presented a system for monitoring
the environmental parameters, modeling and manipulating
micro-climate of urban areas. The system is implemented for
the adaption of efficient urban infrastructure after analyzing
the urban micro-climate.
Shete., R. and Agrawal S. [6] provides the framework for
monitoring the city environment. Low cost Raspberry pi is
used for implanting the system. Parameters like carbon
monoxide, carbon dioxide, temperature and pressure are
measured but no emphasis is given on particulate matter
which left the environment monitoring incomplete. Fig. 1.Simplified diagram of Proposed System
Mitar simic, Goran M. et al [16] presented a system for
measurement and acquisition of data of water and air quality A. Raspberry Pi
parameters and results are shown on IBM Watson IoT Raspberry Pi is a single board computer. It has ARM
platform. The system is battery powered with solar panel Cortex A7 CPU and 1 GB RAM which makes it a faster and
based charger unit. powerful than the previous available models. It has Broadcom
Chiwewe, Tapiwa M., and Jeofrey Ditsela [17] collected BCM2836 quad core processor which is running at 900 MHz
air quality data from different cities of South Africa. Machine but it can be overclocked. It has 4 USB ports, 40 GPIO pins, 1
learning technique was applied to the data and prediction full HDMI port, 1 Ethernet port, 3.5 mm audio jack and
models were generated for ground level ozone. composite video, camera interface (CSI), the display interface
III. SYSTEM DESIGN (DSI) [6]. It has a separate slot for Micro SD card slot which
is used for storing operating system as well as other
The simplified diagram of the proposed system is software’s and drivers needed. Raspberry Pi can support
demonstrated in Fig.1. Raspberry pi is the major node different operating systems such as Raspbian, Windows 10,
controlling our system. The sensors are being used for Ubuntu etc. Raspbian operating system is used for
detecting different environmental parameters like particulate implementation of system. Node Red is a visual programming
matter, Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Temperature, toolfor IoT which is very easy to use. Node Red has an inbuilt
Humidity and Pressure. The sensors are connected to Arduino library consisting of thousands of flows and nodes which
Board and Raspberry pi is interfaced with Arduino Uno enable the users to connect all kind of devices and services.
through USB cable. The data sensed by the sensors are Once the flow is made it can be deployed and data can be
continuously transmitted through Raspberry pi to the cloud seen on the dashboard.
over the internet because of its good network connectivity.
The sensors DSM501A is a PM sensor whose output is PWM, B. Sensing Unit
used for measuring the particulate matter i.e. smoke and dust Sensing Unit comprises of five sensors for monitoring the
present in our environment, DHT22 and BMP180 are having air pollution. Table 1 shows the technical specifications of the
digital outputs used for measuring temperature, humidity and three air quality sensors, Temperature, Humidity and pressure
pressure. The sensors, MQ9 (Gas sensor) as well as sensors. DSM501A is a low-cost dust sensor module has a
MQ135(air quality sensor) are analog sensors used for very high sensitivity as it can even detect the fine particles
measuring Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. having the diameter greater than 1 micron. MQ9 is highly
Arduino Uno is a low -cost microcontroller board based sensitive to carbon monoxide / combustible gases. It has a
on ATMEGA -328P which can be easily interfaced with simple drive circuit and has a prolonged life. With the rise in
Raspberry pi and has a very effective ADC. Since Raspberry concentration of the gases in air, conductivity of the sensors
pi 2 model B does not have built in Wi-Fi adapter therefore also increases. MQ135 has wide scope for detection of NH3,
Wi-Fi adapter is used for providing the internet to the alcohol, CO2, smoke, etc. with a very low response time.
complete system. The light weight protocol MQTT (Message DHT22 is a four-pin, resistive type having digital output
Queuing Telemetry transport). MQTT plays an important role relative humidity and temperature sensor. BMP 180 is a low-
in establishing communication between the sensors and the cost sensor used for monitoring barometric air pressure and
clients. The client can access the data that is being displayed can also be used as an altimeter as the pressure changes with
on the dashboard by using the device id but the client will be the variations in altitude.
not able to do any modification to the data received.
The schematic diagram of our system has been shown in Table. 1: Air Parameters Sensing
Fig.1.

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Parameter Operating Measuring Range follow request/response architecture instead it follows

Voltage publish/subscribe architecture.
Particulate Matter 5V 10 to 10000 ppm IV. METHODOLOGY
Our sensor based Air quality monitoring system measuring
Carbon Monoxide 1.5 V 10 to 10000 ppm the ambient pollution is highly accurate, affordable, easy to use.
DSM501A is a PM sensor connected to digital pin 5 of Arduino,
DHT22, BMP180 are connected to the Digital pi3 and 4 of the
Carbon Dioxide 5V 10 to 10000 ppm Arduino where as MQ135 and MQ9 are interfaced to analog pin
2 and 3 of Arduino. Arduino is interfaced with Raspberry pi via a
USB cable. Raspberry pi is connected to internet with the help of
Temperature 3.3 V -40 to +80 degree Celsius
Wi-Fi adapter and the adapter is connected to Raspberry pi at
USB port.
Relative Humidity 3.3 V 0 to 100 % RH Initially operating system has to be installed into Raspberry pi
by downloading image from the Raspberry pi official website.
The file having .zip extension has to be unzipped to retrieve .img
Pressure 5V 300 to 1100 hPa file and write the image to the SD card.
As of November 2015, version of Raspbian Jessie, SD card
image is preinstalled with Node-RED and it is necessary to
C. Software Architecture upgrade it. When Pi boots up using the command “sudo
It involves Node-Red and Integrated Development systemctl enable nodered.service” Node-RED starts running
Environment. automatically. In order to use cloud services of IBM, an
1) Node-RED account is created at IBM Bluemix and at the same time
Node-RED is an easy to use, fundamental and an open source device is to be registered. Once the device is registered,
programming tool for IoT applications. It is highly used visual Bluemix IoT platform will acknowledge the user by providing
programming tool which help IoT developers to integrate the Auth token which can be used for the communication of
Hardware devices, APIs and online services in a very interesting data from device to Bluemix IoT platform.
and creative manner. Built in Library of Node-Red consist of The sensors are already connected to the Arduino board
thousands of flows and nodes that enable the user to connect all and Raspberry pi is interfaced with Arduino. So, by deploying
kind of devices and services. Flows can be run at the edge of a flow containing Serial in node to receive the data coming
network on the hardware like Raspberry pi or in the cloud since from Serial port to raspberry pi, Serial in node is connected to
node-red runtime includes node.js. Node-Red provides a simple Watson IoT node for sending the data to the cloud. The data
click mechanism to deploy the flows by the IoT developers to a can be seen on the dashboard of IBM Bluemix IOT platform
light weight runtime environment. anywhere in the world, only requirement is that device should
2) Integrated Development Environment be connected to internet.
Arduino programs can be written in any programming V. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
language that has a complier for a conversion of program
code into the binary code. IDE is platform independent acting As shown in fig.2 the complete setup for the system
as the base for Arduino hardware. It is a very powerful for consisting of sensors, Arduino, Raspberry pi has been shown.
programmers, project development professionals and
researchers to develop various Arduino projects employing
different kind of sensors. Arduino IDE is an open source
design/ software which has originated from the integrated
development environment for the languages processing and
wiring projects. As IDE is platform independent, it can run on
Windows, Linux based operating system as well as Mac OS
[9]. Some of the key features of IDE include a text console,
message area, toolbar for common functions. A program for
Arduino using IDE platform is known as sketch, languages Fig. 2. Experimental Setup
like C, C`++ are supported by Arduino IDE for programming.
3) MQTT Protocol VI. RESULTS
MQTT is extremely light weight connectivity protocol for
The flow made in our visual programming tool i.e. Node-
internet of things applications. It is designed for devices and
high latency, low bandwidth, unreliable network. Its RED has been shown in Fig. 3. Device Centric Analysis on
mainprinciple is to minimize device resource requirement and IBM Watson IOT Platform has been shown in Fig.4
network bandwidth. IANA reserved TCP/IP port 1883 for use
with MQTT over SSL [12]. Unlike HTTP protocol it does not

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Fig. 3. Node-RED Flow of System

Fig. 4. Device Centric Analysis on IBM WATSON Platform

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The parameters being displayed on the dashboard have VII. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
been shown in Fig.5. Because of the different designs The proposed system provides low cost, low power,
available on IBM Watson platform, the Dashboard compact and highly accurate system for monitoring the
presentation looks very appealing. environment with the dedicated sensors remotely from any
place in this world. A perfect tradeoff between accuracy and
cost is achieved by making use of single board minicomputer
Raspberry pi and appropriate sensors leading to a well-
grounded system. Datasheets available on the dashboard of
IBM Bluemix account will help in framing good policies
against the increasing level of pollution to ensure healthful
environment. Air quality monitoring system can be more
advantageous if pollutants like Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
dioxide, ground level ozone etc. are also monitored.
Furthermore, long-term pollution patterns can be discovered
and certain relationships between the air pollutants can be
found.

Fig. 5. Dashboard REFERENCES

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