Title: Intelligent Monitoring System on Refrigerator

Trucks Based on the Internet of Things

Abstract - Refrigerator transportation is an important part of cold chain. Aiming at monitoring
the temperature and humidity inside the refrigerator trucks and managing information of the
refrigerator trucks internal. In this system, there is a design of an intelligent monitoring system
based on the Internet of thing, realized monitoring temperature and humidity inside the
refrigerator trucks and the intelligent cargo identification, and tracking the location of
refrigerator trucks real-time in the entire transportation process by using advanced technologies
like MQTT, Cloud Computing, sensor technology and the wireless communication technology.

Keywords: Refrigerator Trucks, Internet of Things, Intelligent Monitoring, MQTT.

Introduction

With the continuous development of society, people pay more and more attention on the food
safety in daily life, especially fruit, dairy and meat food’s preservation problem. In the food cold-
chain process, the transport process of refrigerator trucks is an important segment to ensure food
safety. In this segment, the temperature and humidity conditions within the refrigerator trucks,
the state of door switch and the location of refrigerator trucks must be real-time monitored. The
Internet of things is a combination of the Internet and all kinds of information sensing devices
such as radio frequency identification devices (RFID), infrared sensors, global positioning
systems, laser scanners, etc. Meanwhile, it based on the simple RFID technology and combined
the existing network technology, database technology and middleware technology to form a huge
network including lots of networking reader and countless mobile labels. This technology is
widely used in intelligent transportation, environmental protection, public security, peace
household, intelligent fire, industrial monitoring, and many other areas, which greatly improved
the social intelligence and automation level. Appling the Internet of things technology in
refrigerator trucks’ transportation can track the position of refrigerator trucks and monitor the
temperature and humidity etc. real-time and monitor the whole transport process Intelligently to
improve transport efficiency.
The paper is based on the concept of thing networking, and used the advanced RFID technology,
humidity sensor technology, door switch monitoring device, GPRS/GPS technology, wireless
communication technology and the Internet to form a remote monitoring intelligent system for
the refrigerator trucks. The remote intelligent monitoring system based on this networking
technology can have a Realtime monitoring of the temperature and humidity, gate switch state,
cargo information and the location of refrigerator trucks, all that make the whole monitoring
process reach informatization.
Literature Survey

 IEEE Papers

No. Paper / Publication Author Year

1. Smart logistics using convolutional neural D. Pamela;Mohana Krishna 2017
networks and sensor data fusion. Chitoor
2. Sensor-integrated low-profile antenna design
Huai-Sheng Wang;Wen-Jiao 2013
for multipath and blockage rich propagationLiao;Chang-Fa Yang;Chen-Hao
environment. Hsu;Tsung-Wei Lien;Chin-Chung
Nien
3. Design of Wireless Sensor Network for Cold Xiliang Ma;Ruiqing Mao 2017
Storage Monitoring System.

4. Design and development of a sensor node to Shobhit Kumar Nagpal;S. Sudha 2015
monitor and detect change in internal
parameters of a cold storage system

5. Tinyos based WSN design for monitoring of V. C. Chandanashree;U Prasanna 2017

cold storage warehouses using internet of Bhat;Prasad Kanade;K M Arjun;J
things Gagandeep;Rajeshwari M Hegde

6. Design and Implementation of Automotive B.K. Priya;Musalareddygari 2017

Cold Storage Unit for Potato Crop Using Sucharitha;Nagaraju Sri Sai Lohith
GSM Varma;Divya Kalluru
7. A novel deployment of smart Cold Chain Sergio Monteleone;Mauro 2017
system using 2G-RFID-Sys temperature Sampaio;Rodrigo Filev Maia
monitoring in medicine Cold Chain based on
Internet of Things
8. Evaluation on Frozen Shellfish Quality by Huanhuan Feng;Wensheng 2020
Blockchain Based Multi-Sensors Monitoring Wang;Bingqi Chen;Xiaoshuan
and SVM Algorithm During Cold Storage Zhang
9. Research on Simulating-Human Intelligent Kaisheng Zhang;Jiaan 2009
Control Method for the Cold-Storage of Zhang;Guofa Guo
Fruits and Vegetables

10 Change Your Cluster to Cold: Gradually Chanyoung Park;Yoonsoo 2019

Applicable and Serviceable Cold Storage Jo;Dongeun Lee;Kyungtae Kang
Design
Problem Definition

To develop an intelligent monitoring system for refrigerated vehicle based on Internet of Things
with low power consumption to be installed on refrigerator trucks and managing information of
the refrigerator trucks from remote location.

Purpose

The purpose of this system is to monitor and track the internal parameters from the refrigerator
trucks

Goals and Objectives

The Goals and Objectives of the given system are as follows:

 To monitor and track various parameters of refrigerator truck link temperature, humidity,
location etc.
 To establish IoT Communication and monitor truck’s internal environment.
 To develop a system that assure extra safety for food and medicines.

Features

 Sensing Parameters- Temperature, Humidity, proximity (for door).

 Low Powered, Battery Operated, Plug and play.
 Store data on Microsoft AZURE/ Amazon AWS.
 Visualization and monitoring on Web and Android App.
 Fully Wireless
 Protocol Used: MQTT
 AI based algorithm for Predict environmental conditions.
 Realtime notification of refrigerator vehicle.
Proposed Architecture

Figure 1 Proposed Architecture

Methodology

Because of the refrigerator trucks’ wide transportation range and some are still in areas with bad
environment, which causes management difficulties in the process of transportation. The
transport goods are mostly fresh meat, fruit, vegetables and dairy products, cold drinks, health
food, which need high requirement of environment. Combined with the characteristics of
transportation process refrigerator trucks above, this system puts forward refrigerator trucks
remote intelligent monitoring system based on the Internet of things. The system adopts modular
design and be constituted by multi-point temperature and humidity acquisition module, the door
switch (proximity sensor) monitoring device, monitoring module in trucks , wireless network,
remote monitoring center, and so on. The system composition diagram was as shown in Figure 1.
This system relies on advanced content networking technologies and combines existing
technology to achieve real-time and accurate monitoring purposes. The temperature and
humidity acquisition module constituted by high performance temperature and humidity sensor
can be used to read the temperature and humidity conditions data within the refrigerator trucks
real-time. In order to measure more accurate temperature and humidity data, more temperature
and humidity acquisition modules can be placed in the box according to actual needs. The door
switch is used to monitor the monitoring device switch state in the process of goods
transportation to avoid goods loss. And the refrigerator tracks position is located and tracked by
the GPS satellite and returns it’s positioning information with temperature and humidity data,
door switch state and cargo information to monitoring center through GPRS network Intelligent
Monitoring System on Refrigerator Trucks Based on the Internet of Things. Using intelligent
analysis software on the remote monitoring center terminal to display refrigerator trucks
temperature and humidity data, door switch state and cargo information real-time to locate and
track the location refrigerator trucks to implement intelligent monitoring management and make
the whole system constitute a real-time, intelligent thing networking.

Circuit Diagram

Figure 2 Circuit Diagram

Software Required

• Programming language – MicroPython / C

• Tool – PyCharm, Arduino IDE
• Protocol - MQTT
• Cloud – Amazon AWS / Microsoft Azure
• Web – HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap

Hardware Required

• Controller – ESP32, Raspberry pi, LoRa Modules

• Sensor –DHT11 (Temperature & Humidity)/DHT22/BME280
• Power Supply (5v DC / Lion Battery)
• Other – OLED display

Area of Project

IOT, M2M

Advantages

 Remote monitoring
 Data will be accessible from anywhere and anytime.
 Friendly user interface which changes according to environmental.
 Simple and compact structure, stable reliable.

Limitations

 Needs to replace or charge battery.

 Bit costly
 Connectivity required
Conclusion

The refrigerator trucks intelligent monitoring system which put forward by this paper was based
on content networking technology. And combined with advanced RFID technology, sensor
technology and wireless communication technology, etc. to realize purposes such as monitoring
the transport process intelligently, improving the refrigerator trucks’ transport efficiency,
preventing the deterioration of goods in transit, and avoiding the loss of goods during
transportation, and so on.

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