Water Level Monitoring

 

Measuring water level is an important task from government and residence side. Thus, existing management systems has to be updated. In this paper, we investigate the water level management using ultrasonic sensor which detects the amount of water present in the tank and returns the percentage of water present in it.

There are various types of Water Level Sensors. But we need to consider few factors when choosing a Water Level Sensor for your Project.

• Temperature Compensation

This is most important in applications where temperature can vary over time and seasonality.

• Barometric Pressure

Those in shallow water applications that require a high degree of accuracy.

•  Sensor Construction

The construction materials are important to the long-term ability of the sensor to perform on site.

• Power Sources

What power sources are employed is dependent on the sensor and the application, determining if the sensor is taking line/auxiliary power, running on batteries, or in some cases, both.

On 4-20mA or 0-5vDC sensors, the power supply is the communication protocol as well.

• Analog VS Digital Sensors

Typically, a 4-20mA or 0-5VDC sensor, are considered analog sensors.

It can be programmed for taking readings and user selected intervals or based upon events the sensor detects.  Data collected by these sensors can be downloaded for processing later.

•  Cable Type

Lastly, what type of cable will the sensor be deployed with? Cables can be made differently based on the sensors used.

Let’s consider for example, one of the Sensor which is trending due to  ease of installation & commonly used for detecting Liquid Level is Ultrasonic Level sensor. It  detects the object and measures the distance by following echo principle. Water is also considered as object when a sound ray strikes water it results in generation of echo which is detected by the echo part of ultrasonic sensor.

By measuring the time duration, distance is determined.

It is integrated with LoRaWAN Module to monitor the information via LoRaWAN.

Next, you’ll need a way to transfer data from your water tank monitor to the User Application. This allows you to track water levels remotely. Here LoRa Gateway will act as a bridge to transfer data from Sensor integrated with LoRa Device to the Cloud Network & further to Application Server.

Advantages:

Non-contact measurement, the measured medium is almost unlimited, and it can be widely used for measuring the height of various liquids and solid materials.

Disadvantages:

The measurement accuracy is greatly affected by the temperature and dust of the current environment, hence it should be the factor which is taken care of while using Ultrasonic Level Sensor.

Smart Parking Management System

 

Have you ever experienced roaming in the city & wasting time in searching for Parking Lots? We all have faced the problem of circling around the Streets, looking for any Parking Spots, burning the fuel & time, increases the traffic congestion & ultimately give up & go home.. 

Thanks to the rising Advanced Technology & Standardized Specifications (LoRaWAN) that supports IoT Devices, works wirelessly over RF communication, which results in solving our everyday parking hassles.

With the help of LoRaWAN technology we have introduced smart parking solutions that will eliminate the tussle for drivers looking for the available parking lot, and parking vendors looking to make revenue out of their parking areas.

Let’s see how this can be done, by utilizing the technology we are all familiar with. The picture below depicts the four stages of how we deploy Smart Parking Solutions & reduce congestion, optimize parking time and reinforce traffic laws

Stage 1:

LoRa enabled Parking Sensor has been installed in order to detect the absence, arrival, presence, and departure of a vehicle. A battery-powered occupancy sensor is installed in each parking space. Their low-power design allows the units to run up to 5 years and require no external wiring or additional equipment to install.

Since we all are very well known about the LoRaWAN Architecture on which this system works. Hence, the LoRa enabled Sensor sends Occupancy Data/Signal to LoRaWAN Gateway.

Stage 2:

The LoRaWAN Gateway receives all the data from the LoRa enabled Sensors comes in its vicinity & forwards the complete packets to LoRa Network Server.

Stage 3:

The Server will be Cloud or dedicated Server. This receives the encrypted data comes from the Gateway in a particular Frame Format consists of Unique Mac Addresses assigned to each End Node. The Server will be integrated with User Application.

Stage 4:

The User Interfaces with Web Based or Mobile based Application which display the decrypted payload retrieved from the Server. It shows only user friendly information related to the Occupancy or Vacant Parking Spaces.

City planning officials and Parking management institutions can also create Invoice against the Parkings available in their premises.

There are certain numerous ways through which we can see the Smart Parking System would be more beneficial & economical rather than wasting time & wandering in search of Parking Lots:

v  In order to think over new improvements for a parking service, the city officials must possess the data gathered from the LoRa devices. After that the data can be analyzed to track the frequency of payment violations, spaces that are used the most or off-hour usage, therefore serving as a useful tool for parking officers and local authorities.

v  It reduces the toxic emissions & unnecessary fuel consumption by reaching out directly to the Parking Space.

v  Integrations of the User based Parking Application with Payment Gateway System enhances cashless transactions.

v  Based on the recent Market Research the Global Smart Parking Market will reach US$ 11.2 Billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 25.5% from 2021 to 2027. The growth of the global smart parking market is majorly driven by increase in energy demand due to the rising population & pollution.

Smart Street Lighting System

We are aiming towards a new framework for the Smart Cities. Here outlining the Smart Street Lighting System is due to the immense power consumption of the present lighting system. Street Light provision is one of the most expensive but important responsibilities of city lighting which accounts for about 10-38% of the total energy bill in typical cities worldwide. Smart street Lighting system is a project on intelligent illumination control of street lights over LoRaWAN and the illumination of the streets, late in the night. The present/conventional time street lightning is facing many challenges in terms of manPower engagement for Road Lights. In sunny and rainy days, ON and OFF time differ discernibly which is one of the significant hindrances of the present street lights systems. Conventional street lighting systems are on most of the day without purpose because these are operated manually and the consequence is that a large amount of power is wasted meaninglessly.

With the rising adaptability of lighting innovation like Light Emitting Diode (LED) lights and all over accessible remote web association, quick responses, hassle free working, and power moderation factor, increases the success rate to showcase the Smart Street Lighting framework.

 The plan of an automated LoRaWAN based lighting framework which focuses on the saving of power, to construct a vitally energy efficient smart lighting framework with integrated sensors and controllers, which makes the system more user friendly and that requires less involvement of manpower.

All the automations can be made possible via LoRaWAN. LoRa means Long Range, this technology enables connectivity, real-time analytics, reporting, and additional functions such as geolocation. It penetrates in dense urban and deep indoor environments, connecting to sensors which are about 15-30 miles away in rural areas, enables multi-year battery lifetime, supports millions of message per base station, helps tracking application without the use of GPS or additional cause for power consumption, LoRaWAN specification ensures interoperability between different applications, Internet of Things (IoT) solution providers and telecom operators, embedded end to end AES-128 encryption of data ensuring optimal privacy and protection & reduces upfront infrastructure investments, as well as operating and end-node costs.

Steps involved in this model are:

(a) Street Light Controller embedded with each street light have the ability to control light functions.

(b) LoRa Technology in the controller channelizes the communication between the street light to LoRa-based Gateway.

(c) The gateway communicates with the cloud where the data is analyzed & processed by an application server.

(d) Application server monitors & controls lighting system.

(e) The server sends maintenance alerts.

There are various applications where this system can be efficiently planned. For example: If any of the Organization want to automate lights such that they would have schedules for operation, faulty light detection, and events & alerts for various parameters. They also have multiple solutions consists of single and three phase Feeder Panels as well including Street Light Controller unit which can be easily mounted on Light Poles, that would also connect to the Internet to give remote monitoring and control capabilities.

Light Controlling Unit (Street Light Controller Unit)

This controller is having feature to control streetlights through ambient light, commands, scheduling etc. With these features this retrofit street light controller makes streetlight smarter. This controller has LoRa module, through which this controller makes two-way communication. Gateway will work as a mediator between Street light controller and server. A user can send command to streetlight through application to control streetlight. This controller has unique MAC address through which we can map with location.

 Feeder panel (Remote Feeder Control Unit)

The feeder panel can control either single or three phases at a time. On board storage allows the feeder panel to store data collected from each phase, alerts & events detected, and the schedules set by supervisor. This helps in eliminating the need for continuous Internet connection for the solution to work. The feeder panel also houses energy meters per phase, in order to keep track of how much energy is being consumed.

Use LoRaWAN network in smart street-light system certainly change the way of billing and maintenance additionally providing long distance wireless communication. Finally, we can conclude that the system provides 50 - 60% of saving in energy bill.