In the last decades, the applications of structural monitoring are moving toward the field of civil engineering and infrastructures. Nevertheless, if the structures have damages, it does not mean that they have a complete loss of functionality, but rather that the system is no longer in an optimal condition so that, if the damage increases, the structure can collapse. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), a process for the identification of damage, periodically collects data from suitable sensors that allow to characterize the damage and establishes the health status of the structure. Therefore, this monitoring will provide information on the structure condition, mostly about its integrity, in a short time, and, for infrastructures and civil structures, it is necessary to assess performance and health status. The aim of this work is to design an Internet of Things (IoT) system for Structural Health Monitoring to find possible damages and to see how the structure behaves over time. For this purpose, a customized datalogger and nodes have been designed. The datalogger is able to acquire the data coming from the nodes through RS485 communication and synchronize acquisitions. Furthermore, it has an internal memory to allow for the post-processing of the collected data. The nodes are composed of a digital triaxial accelerometer, a general-purpose microcontroller, and an external memory for storage measures. The microcontroller communicates with an accelerometer, acquires values, and then saves them in the memory. The system has been characterized and the damage indicator has been evaluated on a testing structure. Experimental results show that the estimated damage indicator increases when the structure is perturbed. In the present work, the damage indicator increased by a maximum value of 24.65 when the structure is perturbed by a 2.5 mm engraving.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/17/4908/pdf

Structural Health Monitoring: An IoT Sensor System for Structural Damage Indicator Evaluation

With the advance and popularity of communication technologies and the Internet, Internet of Things (IoT) becomes one of the most popular technologies in recent decade. IoT are applied to various applications, such as health care, smart home and environmental monitoring in our daily life. Three short-range communication technologies, Bluetooth, WiFi and ZigBee are widely used in IoT devices but along with short transmission range, middle power consumption and weakness of interference. Hence, Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) for the cellular network are proposed for wide coverage, lower power consumption and massive devices with reliable communication for IoT devices. Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) is highly valued by the industry for its reliable connection, optimal network topology, low latency, low power consumption and low construction cost.Due to rapid changes in climate, demands on environmental monitoring for various applications, such as animal migration and greenhouse of high-cost crops are increased. In this paper, a prototype of smart lighting system based on Narrowband-IoT communication is proposed for connecting the back-end system and fields such as outdoor greenhouses or street lights. In the testbed, the dimming of the light is scheduled and controlled as well as monitoring the environmental temperature and humidity of the field. Experimental results are shown to verify usabilities and advantages applying Narrowband-IoT to the smart lighting system.

A smart lighting system for greenhouses based on Narrowband-IoT communication

With the technological trends moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), most of the continuous monitoring applications are migrating from wired networks to wireless low power short range communications. In a greenhouse, the continuous monitoring and management of the climatic conditions is of crucial importance. The paper presents an approach to the design and performance analysis of a flexible greenhouse monitoring wireless sensor module, based on general purpose microcontrollers and low power ZigBee communication modules. The results shows good performance in terms of functionality, accuracy, and overall cost. However, the measurements show that there is still space for system improvement in the sense of power consumption.

The design of a ZigBee-based greenhouse monitoring system

Sensors are the primary component of a monitoring and control system. Effective monitoring and control of the microclimatic environment in a greenhouse is the key necessity for protecting crops from adverse environments. Moreover,the greenhouse microclimate is influenced by various factors. In the large-scale greenhouse facilities, several sensors and actuators are needed to control the system. Manual monitoring and control of such a large and complex system is labor-intensive and impractical. Therefore, an automatic monitoring and control system in the greenhouse becomes indispensable. In addition, microclimatic parameters such as temperature, humidity, and solar irradiance in the greenhouse are non-linearly interlinked, thereby forming a non-linear multivariate system. Thus, an appropriately designed sensor system is needed for monitoring and controlling the greenhouse microclimate. Research articles on greenhouse microclimate monitoring and control published in the last 6 years were considered. The sensor devices and technologies applied to control particular environmental parameters in the greenhouse and their key achievements were systematically reviewed. In addition, different approaches to determine the optimum number of sensors and their placement inside the greenhouse were investigated. It was found that spatially installed sensor devices above the plant height reflect the actual information of the environment getting by plant. Furthermore, both hardware and software-based sensing techniques control the greenhouse microclimate optimally. The proper positioning of sensors and their protection from harsh environmental factors is also essential. It can be concluded that modern sensor devices and systems are driving the greenhouse monitoring and control system toward an intelligent, real-time, remotely accessible, and fully automatic system.

Sensor Systems for Greenhouse Microclimate Monitoring and Control: a Review

In traditional farming, farmer has to visit the farming land regularly to measure the various environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, light intensity and soil moisture to cultivate the right crops at right time in right soil. Even though this traditional farming system have been used for years, the system is hectic and fail to prove high productivity rate as farmer usually unable to measure all the parameter accurately [1]. In contrast, greenhouse farming is a system where farmer cultivate crops in ecosystem environments where all environmental parameters are adjusted based on crops types. Automation in greenhouse is a method where farmer is able to monitor and control the greenhouse environment automatically from anywhere in the world any time [3]. In this paper, authors proposed an automated greenhouse monitoring and controlling system that incorporate various sensors such as temperature sensor, humidity sensor, light sensor and soil moisture sensor to collect possible environmental parameters of greenhouse as well as integrate Arduino Uno R3 (to store and process data), GSM module (to send the measured value of the various parameters to the user cell phone via SMS to ensure efficient growth of plants), solar power system with rechargeable battery (to make sure continuous power supply to the greenhouse system). Moreover, Internet of Things (IoT) is used to store data to a database and process the collected data and finally send the information to the android apps which has been developed for monitoring and controlling of greenhouse by the user. Moreover, the authors compared the proposed greenhouse model with some recent works and found the proposed system cost effective, efficient and effective by analyzing major environmental parameters. Finally, authors analyze the cost associated with the deployment of proposed greenhouse model which depict quite affordable for farmers and worth deploying.

An Automated Greenhouse Monitoring and Controlling System using Sensors and Solar Power

As an important agricultural infrastructure, greenhouse plays an important role in the development of modern agriculture to supply proper environment for plants. The wireless sensor network has the advantages of simple structure, high efficiency, low cost, safety and reliability compared with the existing wired monitoring technology. This paper describes a design of greenhouse environment monitoring system based on wireless sensor network, the system integrates detection, wireless communication, alarm, display, control and other functions into one, using temperature and humidity sensor SHT11 and light intensity sensor BH1750 for data monitoring, using CC2530 as microprocessor, man-machine interface is realized by using LabVIEW software. The system is mobile and flexible, strong expansibility, low cost, low power consumption, flexible operation, the experiment proved that the system measurement accuracy, control stable operation. It can satisfy the demand of the greenhouse monitoring.

Design of greenhouse environment monitoring system based on Wireless Sensor Network

In recent years, the incidence of abnormal leg types such as foot internal rotation, foot external rotation, partial flat foot and O-shaped leg is very high among teenagers and children in China, which has a serious impact on the growth of teenagers. Gait monitoring system is used to detect whether children’s walking posture is correct or not. Because of its good portability, low cost and accurate measurement, it is widely used in the medical field. This paper designs a gait monitoring system for young children based on domestic FPGA, which is designed by Chinese. The 32-bit SOC architecture with Cotex-M3 as the core is used as the controller. The gait information is obtained through mpu6050 sensor, and then the controller calculates and processes the collected data. The data calculated by attitude angle is uploaded to the cloud platform through WIFI module. After obtaining the data, the upper computer displays the angle offset value. At the same time, when the measurement angle is higher or lower than the set threshold, the system alarm device will be triggered. The hardware structure of the system is simplified, which can meet the high-speed data transmission work, and provides a more stable and accurate reference standard for attitude information.

Design of Infant Gait Monitoring System Based on FPGA

With the continuous improvement of the combination of computer control technology and traffic flow theory, and the continuous enhancement of traffic management methods, it is an important task for researchers to greatly improve the level of intelligent transportation in China. In view of the current needs of the development of intelligent transportation, this paper simulates the specific traffic environment in real life in combination with the simulation environment in the laboratory, and builds a smart car that meets the environmental requirements for this environment, and sets the console host computer interface as the interface. The information exchange platform between smart cars can also control the start and stop of smart cars according to the needs of users.In order to realize the system, the system designs two schemes for the behavior of smart cars: for embedded development, it uses infrared to track and RFID radio frequency card for positioning of smart cars; for image recognition, it uses residual network. Virtual tracking, and smart car behavior using AlexNet’s marker recognition. The two behaviors are aimed at the same simulated environment, and the smart car can comprehensively consider the two behaviors, so that the response to the environment is more accurate and precise. Finally, a sand table-based intelligent traffic control system is formed.

Yang Zhang

Papers

Design of greenhouse environment monitoring system based on Wireless Sensor Network

Design of Infant Gait Monitoring System Based on FPGA

An intelligent traffic control system based on sand table