Internet Based Environment Sensing




Internet Based Environment Sensing



Internet Based Environment Sensing


At times it is difficult to be physically present at a location to monitor its environmental conditions. Adverse environmental conditions in certain places such as kiosks, can damage the equipment. For this we require to be remotely present say through the Internet. To overcome such problems CRCS has developed the Internet Based Environment Sensing to continuously monitor the environmental conditions and takes necessary action.

Internet Based Environment Sensing is a general-purpose application that provides a 5-channel analog interface to the PC. It has local intelligence in the form of a microcontroller and provides web server interface through CGI. Also, it draws power from the PC serial port and does not need an external power supply. This has resulted in the reduction of its size and cost.

Internet Based Environment Sensing can be used in several applications - both standalone and Internet-based. CRCS has focused on the following three main applications out of which two have been worked upon.
  • Environment Sensor
  • Web-based Instrumentation
  • Mini-Weather Station
The Environment Sensor, uses the PIC16C73 microcontroller to capture environmental parameters and convey them to the serial port of a server. A CGI script on the server processes these values and displays them on a web page thus converting the server into a "cognitive server" that is "aware" of its environment.

For Web-based instrumentation, the board was converted into a multimeter that provided two channels of voltage measurement and two channels of current measurement.

For using the device as a Mini-Weather Station, the sensors have to be replaced with appropriate weather parameter sensors to measure atmospheric parameters such as wind speed, atmospheric pressure, etc. This will lead to the conversion of the device and server combination into a weather station. It is possible to have one such station at every major city or a holiday resort. These stations can either act as servers themselves or they can collect the data and FTP it to a central server periodically. This will make real-time weather data available to tourists across the world. This concept is currently being used in kiosk monitoring.

This project reflects the efforts of CRCS in the area of Remote monitoring.


For more details contact: Meera S. Datta