DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A WI-FI IMAGING SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

General introduction

Recently, technological developments have given huge contribution to improve the quality of human life and welfare. This technology can be used to monitor and control the use of electrical energy and electronic devices at home to facilitate the activities of the user. Nowadays, Automation technology in controlling electronic devices and electrical energy is one of the major applications. A few issues involved when designing a home automation system are: it should be measurable so that new devices can easily be integrated into it, user friendly interface so that the device can be easily set up, monitored and controlled. The established methods of home automation utilize an electrical device called microcontroller for controlling this task.

With the advent of computers in the early 1940’s, the cost of computing devices have reduced tremendously. This has led to computers being ubiquitous. The ubiquitous nature of computers has led to what is today known as Internet of Things (IOT). IOT is a technological advancement in which devices in the home, hospitals, schools have Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and can communicate with each other. To this end, many home automation tasks have been done using wireless technologies like radio, Global System for Mobile (GSM), WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) and zigbee.

Computer users have been looking for ways of making use of these devices to solve their everyday problems. IoTs can be described as connecting everyday objects like smart phones, internet televisions, sensors and actuators to the internet where the devices are intelligently linked together to enable new forms of communication amongst people and themselves. The significant advancement of IoTs over the last couple of years has created a new dimension to the world of information and communication technologies. The advancement is leading to anyone, anytime, anywhere (AAA) connectivity for things with the aim that this extends and create an entirely advanced dynamic network of IoTs. The IoTs technology can be used for creating new concepts and wide development space for smart homes in order to provide intelligence, comfort and improved quality of life.

Utilizing web services is the most open and interoperable way of providing remote service access or enabling applications to communicate with each other. An attractive market for home automation and networking is represented by busy families and individuals with physical limitations. In this project, we developed a WiFi-based Remote Temperature Control and Monitoring system using Arduino Uno and ESP8266 WiFi module. This system automates the process of heating an incubator and keeping it at a constant temperature and also facilitates configuration of the system with the help of a web interface.

• Problem statement

As consumers of chicken and eggs increase, there is need for production to be scaled up. With

the advent of computers, this becomes possible if certain manual tasks can be automated. Notwithstanding, many existing poultries still do on-site control of the temperature and monitoring of their incubators. They have dedicated staff who check on the temperature from time to time and switch ON/OFF the heater or cooler as is desired. This is inefficient, especially with a very big poultry and the cost increases geometrically with increase in poultry farm size. Two main issues arise here -:

1. On-site monitoring facilities of temperature

2. On-site control panels for the temperature of the incubator

• Aim of the project

This is project is aimed at solving the problem of manual heating and cooling of homes, poultry farms, hospitals, laboratory equipment etc. by using an automated micro-controller system. This project will eliminate the need for manual on-site temperature control and monitoring by providing a web interface which can be accessed over a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN or LAN) simply with either smartphones, desktops or laptops.

• Scope of the work

The system has an on-site configuration panel to set the reference temperature of the incubator, an LCD for on-site monitoring, an alarm system in case things get out of hand, and a web interface for control and monitoring. This system in other words, combines on-site and online capabilities for a temperature monitoring and control system thereby enabling the user to control all his incubators from an integrated interface. Two key deliverables of this project are

1. On-site configuration panel and monitoring with an LCD

2. Remote configuration and monitoring web interface over a WLAN

• Report organization

The first section of this report is this introduction which seeks to wet the appetite of the reader of what is contained in the document. In chapter two, we review some literature of some works that have been done before now on home automation and IOT in general. Thereafter, we layout the methodology used in this project in chapter three. Chapter four contains the results, what we did in this project, giving various deliverables at each stage. In chapter five, we present our conclusions and also give some recommendations for further work in this research area.