International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)

Volume 169 – No.11, July 2017

Air Quality Monitoring System using Raspberry Pi and

Web Socket

A. Mari Kirthima Aravind Raghunath

Assistant Professor Student
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Department of Computer Science and Engineering
BMS Institute of Technology, Avalahalli BMS Institute of Technology, Avalahalli
Yelahanka, Bengaluru-560064 Yelahanka, Bengaluru-560064

ABSTRACT observing techniques. Such exact checking concentrates the

Air quality nowadays has been degraded to a large extent that it convergences of toxins in different parts of a land territory. It
has become a necessary criteria for us to monitor its quality. The likewise gives us the reliance of these toxins on different
quality of air has been affected by various factors like industrial ecological components, for example, temperature, moistness and
emission, vehicular transmission etc. The evolution of various different contaminations. Another critical normal for such a
technology like the Internet of Things, Raspberry Pi, it has framework would be movability. There is an expansion in
become easier for us to deploy sensors and allow to detect the modernity of measuring gadgets utilized today, despite the fact
quality of air in real time. The Internet Of things is a term for that this acquires a larger amount of detail these gadgets have a
various devices communicating with each other which was not tendency to be massive in size. These confines the scope zone as
possible before since the different devices use different kind of few of these futures introduced in a specific city and furthermore
data which has been overcome by the use of single board growing the range would require more stations, talented laborers
computer (Raspberry Pi). Integration of IOT with Sensor nodes and higher upkeep. Contamination checking ought not be the
with the help of Raspberry Pi for Air Quality Monitoring sole obligation of the administration and frameworks ought to be
provides an effective way than the approaches that were accessible to make subjects mindful of the contamination
previously used. Sensor web node is proposed with commercial content in the territory and find a way to lessen the
gas sensors for detecting the gases like CO, CO2 etc to monitor contamination. This is the point of our venture. This paper
both indoor and outdoor air quality. The results obtained through shows a model to accomplish precise checking, which would be
these sensors are then evaluated by Ruby on Rails Server possible, versatile and give remote access to detected
through web socket. information and continuous information.

Keywords 2. RELATED WORK

Raspberry Pi, Arduino Mega, Web Socket, Sensors, IOT In [7], the author explains the pervasive monitoring of the air
quality in the atmosphere. The system comprises of various
1. INTRODUCTION components such as sensors Raspberry Pi and python
The air we inhale straightforwardly impacts our wellbeing, thus programming to send read the data and display the data on to a
keeping up an ideal nature of air is significant to sustenance. Air terminal.
contamination is a genuine worry, with a plenty of sources. In [6], the author uses the analog to digital converter and sends
From indoor air contamination to mechanical and vehicular the data from the sensor to the Raspberry Pi from the Raspberry
discharges, all of which are adverse to our wellbeing. Pi the data is sent to the Plotly website where the data is
Confirmations indicate how drawn out introduction of kids to captured and appropriate graphs are drawn accordingly.
indoor contaminations corrupt youngster development [1].
Indoor air contamination is likewise a noteworthy supporter of 3. DESIGN
the national weight of ailment in India [2]. The different The major goal of our system is to read the data of polluting
wellsprings of indoor air contamination incorporate consuming gases in the atmosphere real time. The system consists of various
of stoves, incense sticks and so on. Additionally, the hardware as well as software infrastructure. The MQ sensors [1]
fundamental contributing sources to open air contamination may that are attached to the system are responsible in reading the
incorporate vehicle fumes exhaust, flames, and gas controlled data. The MQ-7, MQ-2, MQ-135 are sensors that are responsible
motors. The significant air toxins constitute ozone, particulate for reading the data. The data which is read by these sensors
matter, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and also sulfur dioxide (SO2), needs an interface so that they can be stored and displayed.
and carbon monoxide (CO). Out of these toxins, carbon
monoxide harming is an intense and deadly harming in The Arduino Mega [2] is a device that can be used to interface
numerous nations. From the previously mentioned sources these devices. The Mega 2560 is a microcontroller board based
deficient burning of powers is the fundamental wellspring of on the ATmega2560. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of
carbon monoxide, certain sort of paints additionally creates CO. which 15 can be used as PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4
The principle focuses of CO are iron or copper containing UARTs (equipment serial ports), a 16 MHz gem oscillator, a
destinations, for us human the red blood cells.[3] Carbon USB association, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset
monoxide responds with hemoglobin show in cells to frame a catch. It contains everything needed to support the
particle which can't convey oxygen to different parts of the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB
body, consequently prompting cerebral pain, wooziness and so cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get
forth. A legitimate comprehension of the sources and extent of started. The Mega 2560 board is perfect with most shields
air poisons is important in creating techniques to control air intended for the Uno and the previous sheets Duemilanove or
contamination. This can be accomplished by creating exact Diecimila. The Mega 2560 is an update to the Arduino Mega,

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 169 – No.11, July 2017

which it replaces. You can find here your board warranty Rails framework implements Web Socket through Action Cable.
informations. Once the devices are connected to the Arduino Once this action cable is established, there will be full duplex
Mega, we can be able to read data from the devices. communication channel between the web server and the
Raspberry Pi. This channel exist until it is manually stopped,
The Raspberry Pi [3] is the next component in our system. The hence the real time data reading can be achieved.
Raspberry Pi is a mini computer that was developed in the
Raspberry Pi foundation in the United Kingdom that was
introduced to teach basic computer science to students.
Raspberry Pi has a quad core Cortex processor. Raspberry Pi 3
used in this paper features a Broadcom Videocore IV with 1 GB
Ram and Ethernet and 802.11 wireless connectivity as well.
Raspberry Pi includes various ports such as HDMI, 3.5mm
audio-video jack 4 usb 2.0, Ethernet and Camera Serial
Interface. The sensors are connected to the Arduino Mega and
the Arduino Mega Plays an interface between the Sensors and
Raspberry Pi. All these are on the hardware side of the system.
Let’s move on to the software side.
The concept of web socket [4] has been used in this paper. Web
socket was introduced as a specification when HTML5 was
developed. Its name was coined by two people Ian Hickson and
Michael Carter in collaboration with IRC chat room. Later,
Google Chrome 4 was the very first browser that included web
socket enabled as default. It is a computer communication
Figure 1.1
protocol which has a full duplex connection between the client
and the host over a single TCP connection. HTTP is a protocol 5. CHALLENGES FACED
in which when a browser requests for a page, the server returns 1. Security
the page and connection is closed. The WebSocket protocol As millions of devices are connected together, security is one of
enables interaction between a browser and a web server with the key features that need to be focused on. Since these sensors
lower overheads, facilitating real-time data transfer from and to detect very sensitive information it is necessary for us protect
the server. This is made conceivable by giving an that data that is in transit from the outside world. Major
institutionalized path to the server to send substance to the industries like defense, medical etc require security as the data
program without being requested by the customer, and taking can be extremely critical in nature.
into consideration messages to be passed forward and backward
while keeping the association open. Along these lines, a two- 2. Data
way (bi-directional) progressing discussion can occur between a The effect of the IOT on capacity is two dimensional in sorts of
program and the server. The communications are done over information to be put away: individual information (buyer
TCP port number 80 (or 443 in the case of TLS-encrypted driven) and enormous information (undertaking driven). As of
connections), which is of benefit for those environments which now being used in key verticals, for example, human services
block non-web Internet connections using a firewall. and monetary administrations, enormous information is
Comparable two-way program server correspondences have changing how and why organizations gather and store
been accomplished in non-institutionalized ways utilizing information. IT administrators that are already tasked with
stopgap advances, for example, Comet. keeping the storage centers running will also have to figure out
how to store protect and make all the incoming data accessible.
Ruby on Rails [5] is a server side web framework written in If, as Gartner, estimated, storage servers are only being used to
Ruby. Rails have a framework that includes a model, view and a between 30 and 50 percent of capacity, the physical capabilities
controller. It provides a default access to a database, a web are there. Managing them, however, is an entirely different
service and web pages. It uses JSON for data transfer and problem.
HTML, CSS, Javascript for display and user interfacing. It uses
convention over configuration software engineering technique as 3. Storage Management
well. However, even if the capacity is available now, there will be
further demands made on storage and one that will have to be
4. IMPLEMENTATION addressed as the need to access this information becomes more
The entire system is connected through various connectors. important. Businesses will have weighed up the economics of
According to figure 1.1, the sensors are connected to the storage against the value of IoT information.
Arduino Mega which acts as the interface. The Arduino Mega
needs a power source so that the sensors start working. The 6. CONCLUSION
Raspberry Pi provides the power supply to the Arduino Mega as In this way our attempt of making a model for observing
well as the sensors. The Raspberry Pi can be connected to the contamination, for the most part the measure of carbon
power supply either through a USB Cable or a charger. Once the monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, smoke utilizing sensors
power supply is given, the sensors start to detect data. The data MQ2, MQ7 and MQ135 individually alongside DHT sensor to
detected by the sensors is sent to the Arduino Mega, when the gauge temperature and stickiness, progressively was executed.
sensor specific code is run on it. We can actually see the data This model is stationary and can be deployed in different places.
coming through the serial monitor in the Arduino IDE. A UDP The sensor measurements of various gases, temperature and
connection is created between the Arduino and Raspberry Pi humidity are accurate.
through a Ruby Code which is run on the Raspberry Pi. Once the
The future enhancement to this model can be done by deploying
data reaches the Raspberry Pi, the only thing left out is to send
the sensors to a movable object. As it is implemented in real
the data to the web server hosted by Ruby on Rails. The Ruby on
time, these sensors can be deployed to a movable robot so that it

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 169 – No.11, July 2017

can move around detecting the various gases present in the [2] Arduino, https://www.arduino.cc/
surroundings. This model can be implemented near industrial
areas so that it can detect the gases and if the gases exceed the [3] Raspberry Pi, https://www.raspberrypi.org/
standard limits of pollution, a website can be designed to inform [4] Web Socket, https://www.websocket.org/
the industrial agents to reduce the pollution. These sensors can
also be implemented in drones which can move around and [5] Ruby on Rails, http://rubyonrails.org/
detect the polluting gases in the environment. Security measures [6] Sunil Karamchandani, et al. ”Pervasive Monitoring of
can be enhanced to protect the data that is being sent through the Carbon Monoxide and Methane using Air Quality
components by introducing new protocols. Prediction”, 2016 IEEE
7. REFERENCES [7] Internet of Things based Smart Environmental Monitoring
[1] Sensors and its Details, http://www.china- using the Raspberry-Pi Computer, 2015 IEEE
total.com/Product/meter/gas-sensor/Gas-sensor.htm

IJCATM : www.ijcaonline.org
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