Design of IoT based air quality monitoring device with optimal solar-based power source

Abstract

The most crucial factors that affecting the health and quality of life of people who live in urban area is the air pollution. In a country with a rapid development economy, such as Malaysia, air pollution one of the highest risks for this country to get involved in this problem. Furthermore, the presence of dust and particulate matter in the air affecting not only humans, animals and plants but also make the efficiency of solar panels in power generations will drop. In addition, the existing air quality monitoring system are mostly dependent on fixed power supply which makes the system less flexible and most of it are not mobile system which making the information difficult to be accessed by the user or public. In this work, a flexible and online monitoring system is proposed for monitoring and measuring the levels of some harmful gases such as CO2, CO, SO2, O3 as well as other environmental parameters which are dust, temperature and humidity. Data is collected by using low cost MQ-series sensors that will send the data to the microcontroller (Arduino UNO), which represent the hardware part of this project as well as the solar tracker and others components. This microcontroller will be using WiFi module, ESP8266-01, a WiFi transceiver which will be connected to the available hotspots to allows the data to be send to the cloud by using an open source Internet of Things (IoT) platform known as ThingSpeak, which is the software part for this project. A solar tracker is added to make the system independent and more flexible. The solar panel will be used to power up the system as well as to recharge the battery at day time. The complete system will later be tested to get expected outcome. In the long term, this system is expected to help the community by providing the data of the surrounding air quality.