LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Theory of Arduino Microcontroller
Arduino has already made a huge impact on learning by doing in the context of electronics. The viral spread of developer community and the widespread acceptance gave the open source hardware a new life potentially challenging many industrial products and new interest in hardware prototyping and electronics [21].
What the Arduino platform has done is to take what was once a fragmented and expensive market for robotics and microprocessors and become the major platform, largely by virtue of much lower cost and bease of use, leading to higher volume and popularity, and community support behind it. Arduino has made it simple to program their boards with any computer via USB and simple to integrate with a wide array of sensors and devices [22].
In his work, [21] described certain trends in the design and features of the Arduino as listed below:
Recent transition of the Arduino chip from 8 bit to 32 bit (ARM Cortex M3), may see the next Arduino (or may be next to next) in the form of a cheap practical computer (like Raspberry pi), maybe a 64-bit processing “beast”.
Being already compatible with major simulation software like MATLAB and LabVIEW, gives room for evenmore flexible programming environment and development options.
Arduino has succeeded in porting of the native language/bootloader to a lot of boards with different processors (even ported to Field – Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) such as Papilo FPGA Platform, Maple IDE – Maple v0.0.12 (For STM32/ ARM Cortex M3-M4).
The idea of notion of Arduino as a single board for only prototyping for kids/students/hobbyist is fading now although there is still a thin line separating it from practical industrial applications. He opines that there is still a long way to go for standardization for industrial use.
There exist new prototyping hardware and compatibility and interfacing with other consumer electronics/TV/smartphones and flooding of shields.
As the graphs2.1 and 2.2(courtesy of Google Trends) suggest, there is surge in interest for Arduino and the community is mushrooming across the globe with many schools, colleges and workshops and tons of material online. It is bound to increase over next few years even though Raspberry Pi may be seen as threat to Arduino, but both of them are complimentary rather than competing with each other.
Graph 2.1: Web Search Interest: Arduino – Worldwide, 2004 – present
Graph 2.2: Web Search Interest: Arduino – Germany, India, United Kingdom, United States
According to [22], the Arduino as great for hobbyists, prototype builders, and people just starting out in robotics because of its low cost, ease of use, and large online community. It is easy to learn and teach people to be able to do basic things with the Arduino, yet it's capable enough to do fairly sophisticated things if one as a developer has the capability to take advantage of it. It is allowing people to develop projects inexpensively to build and control their own devices, such as sensors that send data to the Internet and control systems for all kinds of things. It is also reducing the cost of development by allowing companies to develop prototypes much more quickly and with less initial investment. He believes that although at this point in time many businesses haven't heard of and aren't using the Arduino, the trend will change pretty quickly as businesses eventually hire people familiar with Arduino. Based on his view;
One of the major things Arduino is going to be able to do for business is to reduce the cost of prototyping, allowing companies to iterate more during development, leading to better, more functional products.
The Arduino is going to enable businesses to do things that aren't commonly done today with remote sensor networks. This could lead to entirely new control strategies for making buildings more comfortable, saving energy, and reducing maintenance costs for equipment.
The Arduino is going to allow businesses to develop products that are more easily upgradeable. For instance, if one buys a product, such as a microwave, there's no way to change the functionality. If the microwave used an Arduino board, one would be able to change the interface or the way that the microwave cooked food to suit one’s desires.
The Arduino is going to reduce the minimum volume necessary to include a control and sensing system with a product. Instead of spending large amounts of money to build hundreds of inflexible circuit boards, the Arduino will allow businesses to bring many more unique devices to market at lower breakeven volumes. This will result in a lot more lower-volume customized products.
The Arduino is going to allow developing countries to do things that they could not in the past. From medical devices to low-cost PLC controllers, the Arduino is going to open up a whole host of options and capabilities for medicine and manufacturing in areas where regulation is not very stringent.
Proprietary electronics like the boards that control one’s washing machine could certainly be disrupted by the Arduino. Instead of being held hostage by a company that wants to charge a lot of money for a replacement, one might alternatively be able to replace a failed component with a custom Arduino board. Or one might be able to use an Arduino board to diagnose exactly what's wrong with one’s washing machine much more easily than otherwise. Maybe the company building the washing machine will sell one a "glider" and the open-source community will develop a control system for it. There is increased likelihood of seeing control systems for consumer appliances that are much more customized, networkable and user-friendly developed by the open-source community. Things will be much easier to use and do what one wants without one having to figure out which 20 buttons to push. And one will be able to monitor and control one’s appliances remotely
With the view of certain future trends for the Arduino described above, it becomes overly pertinent to indicate certain technological systems and applications that may be affected by the full worldwide adoption of the Arduino. Discussing the fate of certain specific applications, [22] points out as listed below;
PLCs - Programmable logic controllers are notoriously expensive and have very limited functionality in terms of what they can do. The Arduino, while not currently hardened for industrial environments, is much more capable in a lot of ways.
SCADA systems - often Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems have expensive and proprietary equipment in remote locations. The Arduino could do monitoring and control in a much more cost-effective manner.
Troubleshooting and diagnosis - having the ability to network many sensors together and analyze the data could provide us with insights that are currently unavailable.
2.2 Theory of Remote Monitoring and Control System
When remote monitoring and control in various electronic systems like the refrigerator is being employed, it aims at providing a simple, efficient, economical and convenient way to monitor these devices. Researchers have over the years employed a varying number of approaches in order to achieve this.
The review of their approaches can be grouped into Internet based monitoring using servers, GPRS modems and Wireless monitoring and control using wireless technology such as: Bluetooth, zigbee, wi-fi, RF(radio frequency)
2.3 Review of Related Works
According to the market research, the common parameters or characteristics of temperature monitoring in warehouses are 24 hours monitoring of the temperature, Ease of use, reliability, efficient, fast and precise notification system. Today a number of temperature monitoring systems are available in market.
According to [11], the system described details about the design and instrumentation of variable rate irrigation, wireless sensor network and real time in field sensing and control by using appropriate software. The whole system was developed using five in field sensor stations which collects the data and send it to the base station using global positioning system (GPS) where necessary action was taken for controlling irrigation according to the database available with the system. The system provides a promising low cost wireless solution as well as remote controlling for precision irrigation.
Also in the work of [12], another system that has been designed by Ming-Han Tsai described in their work “Multi-Sensor Wireless Signal Aggregation for Environmental Monitoring System via Multi-bit Data Fusion.” This system uses low power, has a low cost, and is small in size. Some of the disadvantages of this system are low data transfer rate, short distance data transmission, and remote monitoring is not implemented.
In another related work according to [13], he described another work. "Food security" refers to the ability of food systems to ensure that everyone has enough food to live a healthy life. To prevent food insecurity, we require reliable food systems at each stage of the food cycle: from food production and harvesting, during transport and distribution, at the shops we buy at and in the social settings wherever we consume food, and in the management of the resulting bio-waste outputs. Lobelia’s wasp mote sensors can be used to monitor and control the whole food cycle.
In the same area, [14] discussed a process to effectively control and monitor humidity in an incubator. The humidity was controlled based on a passive and active system. In the passive system, air was passed over a water reservoir, causing the air to have an increase in humidity, before being distributed throughout the room. The level of control for the passive system was minimal, as opposed to the active model, which used a step motor that rotated to allow humidity in.
[15] In his journals for the automatic detection and control of light, in one such article, a light sensor in the control module detects a change in light intensity and a radio frequency module is used to change the lighting [9].
In his work, [16] has discussed monitoring these three environmental conditions; however, there has been no mention about having actuators to modify 8 these surroundings. An advantage of this sensor system is that it is wireless, based on Zigbee technology, which has low power consumption [16].
Also [17] implemented a wireless interface based on ZigBee and Bluetooth technology. The purpose is to acquire, process, and transfer raw data from refrigerator device to Bluetooth network. The Bluetooth network can be connected to PC or PDA for further processing. The interface comprises two types of device: MDIZ and MDIZB. MDIZ acquires data from medical device, processes them using microcontroller, and transmit the data through ZigBee network through UART. MDIZB receives data from several MDIZs and transmit them out to PC through Bluetooth network. MDIZB comprises of ZigBee module, two processors, RAM, and Bluetooth module. It receives data from ZigBee network through its ZigBee module. The data are then sent to processor 1. Processor 1 decides priority of MDIZs. In processor 1, the data frame is added with Start byte and End byte to mark the beginning and the end of data frame. After being processed in processor 1, the data are then sent to processor 2 through SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface). Processor 2 transmits data to PC through Bluetooth network. Processor 2 controls Bluetooth module. It also receives commands given by PC through Bluetooth network.
Another author, [18] has developed a system for precision irrigation using sensor network mainly aimed for monitoring soil moisture and estimating evapotranspiration by considering soil moisture, soil temperature and relative humidity as parameters for measurement. The objectives of the system were to provide precision agriculture and irrigation, to increase the agricultural production, to provide precise monitoring system and to use resources at the fullest extends so as to give efficient system. The system was analyzed for 3-4 months for calculating evapotranspiration rate. For more precise results, the system should be analyzed for 3-4 seasons.
[20] Designed & developed a theft control system for home, aimed at preventing/controlling any theft attempt. The developed system makes use of an embedded system (comprises an open hardware microcontroller and a GSM modem) based on Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) technology. The designed & developed system can be installed in the home. An interfacing intrusion-detector unit is also connected to the microcontroller (arduino)-based security system.
In case of an intrusion attempt, a warning SMS is transmitted by the system to the owner’s mobile phone, or to any pre-configured mobile phone number for further processing [20].
2.4 Summary of Related Works
The different approaches reviewed above can be summarized in terms of their major strengths and major weaknesses, thus;
Major strengths
1. Exhaustive research has been carried out on Internet based Monitoring scheme with various protocols and systems providing detailed description of remote process states to the authorized users.
2. Numerous systems have been developed using Wireless Sensor Networks which consists of several sensor nodes in proximity and having data transmission and reception capability between nodes and central base station for wide range of applications. Though initial deployment cost may be high, the operational cost of data communication within the system is negligible.
Major Weaknesses
1. Most of systems based on Internet monitoring require higher operational cost based on bandwidth / data speed requirements and hence is justified only in industrial or biomedical applications in developing countries. These systems generally do not have alert facilities against occurrence of abnormal conditions. User needs to have PC / smart phone / PDA with suitable software support. Security vulnerability is the most striking alert point of Internet. No malicious party should ever gain control of system. Web usage requires resources like flawless Internet connections and hosting servers, which may not always fit to the concept of remote controlling.
2. The development and deployment cost of wireless sensor networks is very high due to need of motes, sensors, radio transceivers, etc. spread over a large area.
3. It is difficult to upgrade existing conventional control systems with remote control capabilities.
4. The long term operational cost of Internet and is relatively high due to usage charges incurred in each message transaction.
The application of the GSM overcomes some of the major challenges facing the past systems.
In the case of remote monitoring based on internet, a smart phone is required seeing as Web usage requires resources like-flawless Internet connections and hosting servers, which may not always fit to the concept of remote controlling whereas remote monitoring based on GSM makes use of simple SMS technology which even the simplest mobile phones are capable of.
In the case of wireless monitoring using Bluetooth, zigbee, etc. the user must not go beyond a particular distance as these wireless devices have a definite range and outside this range these devices will not work whereas remote monitoring using GSM uses cellular technology which allows the user to monitor the controlled device from anywhere in the world.