AVR Based Temperature Monitoring and Controlling Using ZigBee in Matlab

AVR Based Temperature Monitoring and Controlling Using ZigBee in Matlab

Ankita Gupta1, Sharmelee Thangjam2

1M.Tech Student, UIET, Panjab University, Chandigarh

2Assistant Professor, UIET, Panjab University, Chandigarh

Abstract WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) has bec ome an emerging area of research in recent years. In this paper a wireless remote sensing and controlling system for real ti me dynamics has been propose d. Vari ation in the te mperature is recor de d i n the GUI wi ndow and pr oper contr olling action is taken accor di ngly. The c hoice of automatic as well as manual c ontr ol has bee n adde d to the design. An 8-bit AVR microc ontroller has been use d to interface the temperature sensor using the IEEE 802.15.4 standar d, ZigBee protoc ol. ZigBee has the charac teristics of low power c onsumption, low c ost and self org anizing features.

1. INTR OD UCTION

   The vast potential of Wire less Sensor Networks is an eme rging area of research in recent years. WSN consists of spatially distributed autonomous sensors to monitor physical or environ mental conditions like temperature, sound, pressure and to cooperatively pass their data through the network to a main location. The advantage of wireless sensor network is that they can be used with ease in the environ ment where wired system cannot be used or if used, are to be treated with caution, for e xa mp le, in med ical treat ment. The WSN is built of nodes- it may vary from fe w to several thousands. Each sensor node has typically several parts – radio transceiver with internal or e xte rnal antenna, a microcontroller for interfacing with the sensors, energy source or battery. Diffe rent types of WSN are- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, PAN (Pe rsonal Area Network), s mart transducers, ZigBee.

   ZigBee is one of the latest and upcoming technologies in the field WSN. Zig Bee is low cost, low power, wire less network standard. Low power usage allo ws longer life with smaller battery. ZigBee supports mesh, star, hybrid and tree topologies. ZigBee has been developed to meet the growing demand for capable wireless networking between numerous low power devices. So it is widely deployed for wire less

   monitoring and control applications [1] – [4]. Zig Bee is a protocol specificat ion and industry standard for a type of wire less communications technology generically known as Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPAN) based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard [4]. The emergence of LR-WPA N technology and ZigBee standardization is appealing because of its potential for relat ively fast, lo w cost, and simplified imp le mentations compared to more traditional wired network installations used for industrial and process automation applications .

2. M AIN OBJECTIVES

   The main a im of th is paper is to design a low cost re mote sensing and controlling wireless system with 8- bit RISC microcontroller and ZigBee transceiver. ZigBee has been used in the field of bio medic ine to monitor the various signs like – temperature, ECG of patients [5] [6]So me of the research work has been imple mented in monitoring green-house environment [7], ho me automat ion [8], d istributed solar panels [9], high voltage switch gears in substations[10]. Temperature is one of the main and common parameter which needs to be monitor in various application areas.

   The ma in objectives of this research are:

   Continuous monitoring as well as controlling of temperature.

   Providing the feature of automatic and manual control.

   Designing of GUI window.

   To transmit the real time data serially on the PC in the form of graph.

3. HARDWAREIMPLEMENTATION

   Hardwa re imple mentation can be divided in to two parts-transmitt ing side and receiving side wh ich are e xpla ined in its sub section.

   1. Transmitting side or sensing node

      Figure 1: Block diagr am of transmitting node

      Transmitt ing node is responsible for sensing and processing of data. Block diagra m of transmitting no de is as shown in the figure1. The te mperature sensor will sense the analog value of temperature and send it to the AVR microcontrolle r. A VR microcontroller will make use of 10 b it in-built ADC and convert the analog value of temperature in to digital form. Imp le mented hardware of transmitting or sensing node is shown in the figure 2. The ma in co mponents used for transmitt ing node are as follow:

      AVR microcontroller Temperature sensor ZigBee module Power supply

      Re lays for controlling devices

      Figure 2: Implemented hardware of transmitter node

      In our implemented hardware, Atmega 8L microcontroller is used. Atmega 8L is an 8 bit microcontroller of At me l Co mpany. Acronym for A VR

      is Advance Virtual RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Co mputing). It is based on CMOS technology. AVR core combines a rich instruction set with 32 general purpose registers. It is featured by:

      Thirty two 8- b it general purpose registers.

      8k bytes of in-system progra mmable flash

      me mo ry, 512 bytes of EEPROM and 1 bytes of internal SRAM.

      10 bit in -built analog to digita l converter (ADC).

      On chip analog co mparator.

      Six channel ADC.

      Progra mmab le seria l USA RT.

      Temperature sensor used is thermistor. A thermistor is a type of resistor whose resistance varies significantly with temperature. It is having high precision in the temperature range of -90 °C to 130° C. The Dig i International Zig Bee/ XBee RF modules are used for wire less communicat ion. It has the desired characteristics of wire less communication. It is having a feature of 128 bit AES. It is designed to operate at 3.3V supply. So to get 3.3V of regulated supply for the ZigBee module LM -2590 IC is used. It needs to be configured through XCTU software . In the present research work, XBee -Pro RF modules had been used to cover a good range for wide application areas. XBee- Pro is having the indoor range of 90m and outdoor line of site up to 1 mile. 5 pin sugar cube relays are used to control the different devices connected at the transmitting or sensing node.

   2. Receiving side or Coordinator side

      The receiving or coordinator node is responsible for gathering the processed data and to display it as required by the application or user. The block diagram of receiv ing node is as shown in the figure 3.

      Figure 3: Block diagr am of recei vi ng node

      Re mote controlling of devices for te mpe rature control and data acquisition is done with the help of GUI window designed in Matlab code. Imple mented hardware of receiving node is shown in figure 4. The ma in components of coordinator node are:

      ZigBee module

      Personal Co mputer (PC) MAX-232

      DB 9 connector

      Figure 4: Imple mente d har dware of recei ving node

      PC can be used as processor in place of microcontroller. So in the proposed work, mic rocontroller is not being used at receiver node; PC performs the functionality of processor and is used to receive the data fro m the transmitting node. The PC uses software drivers to communicate with the devices. MAX-232 and DB 9 connector are used to set up serial commun ication between PC and ZigBee module.

4. EXPERIMENT AND RES ULT

   The software imple mentation of this research work can be divided in to two main parts. At transmitter side the software imp le mentation is done on AVR microcontroller. The software used for AVR microcontroller is AVR studio5. The whole programming at transmitter side is written in assembly language. At receiver side, software imple mentation is based on MATLAB.

   Followingsteps are imple mented in the programming section:

   Sensed value is converted in to digital value by

   using ADC of A VR controlle r.

   Seria l co mmunication at 9600 baud rate is done and data is passed to ZigBee router.

   ZigBee router passed the data to ZigBee coordinator.

   ZigBee coordinator received the data. Seria lly interfaced with PC at 9600 bps.

   Data acquisition and conversion of raw data in to temperature is done in Matlab.

   Controlling feature is added in the GUI window designed in Matlab to control various devices. Automatic and manual feature of controlling is added in this GUI window.

   The GUI window designed for selecting automatic and manual control of devices attached at the transmitter end to control the temperature is as shown in the figure 5. Device 1 will start automatically if the temperature sensed is between 30°C-40°C and similar is with device 2 and device 3. They will start automatically if the temperature is between 50°C-60°C and 70°C-80°C respectively. If we go for manual controlling then any of the devices can be started or stopped fro m GUI window. By pressing Start device 1 will start the device 1 at the transmitter side and by pressing Stop device 1 will stop the device 1. Similarly other two devices can be manually controlled fro m the GUI window.

   Figure 5: GUI wi ndow designe d for c ontrolling de vices

   In this work three devices are used to control the temperature of the transmitt ing side. Re lays are being used for this purpose. In the automatic controlling of te mperature, each device can start and stop according to the temperature range set for them. While in manual controlling, one can start and stop any device according to the need. Figure6 is showing variation in the temperature at rea l t ime p lotted in the form of graph.

   Figure 6: Gr aph showing te mperature variation in real ti me

5. CONCLUSION

The proposed research work can be used in various application areas. Due to long battery life, it can be used in the re mote areas where battery consumption is a major issue. Various application areas include- industrial monitoring, nuclear powe r plant monitoring. In these application areas, a little variation in te mperature can cause serious accidents. So temperature needs to be controlled time ly. Other application areas can be greenhouse monitoring, defense and bio medical applications.

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