2010 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing Systems (ICSPS)

A ZigBee Based Embedded Remote Control System

Cui Chengyi, Zhao Guannan, Jin Minglu

Facuty of Electronic Information and Electrcal Engineering
Dalian University of Technology
Dalian, China
e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract—Wireless remote control system can make our daily flexibility, which is an ideal wireless method for data
life more convenience. In this paper, a Zigbee based embedded acquisition and commands sending. Therefore, it is widely
remote control system is implemented. The system not only used in home automation, industrial data acquisition and
provides the wireless communication capability by utilizing control, and environmental monitoring, etc.
Zigbee technique but also runs on an embedded board rather
In this paper, a ZigBee based embedded remote control
than a PC, to make the system size smaller, the power
consumption and cost lower. The Web Server is boa in this system is designed, which can not only realize Internet
system. Moreover, the paper describes the running and the remote control via embedded Web Server but also take the
configuration procedures of boa on the embedded broad in advantage of wireless communication by utilizing ZigBee.
detail. Since the embedded Web Server uses common gateway The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section Ċ
interface (CGI) to communicate with other modules in the describes the experimental setup. Section ċ discusses the
system, the CGI program is also described here. The software
embedded Web Server. ZigBee technology is given in
design of Zigbee is based on TI’s Z-stack, and the Zigbee
modules are implemented by TI’s CC2430. The testing system Section Č. Finally, the conclusion is provided in Section č
can be visited in any remote places wherever you have an .
Internet interface and a browser with any standard. The
controlled modules can be communicated by wireless mode. II. EXPERIEMNTAL SETUP
Therefore, our designed system is a promising candidate for Figure 1 shows the system architecture which consists
home automation applications, remote industrial control areas of an embedded Web Server, a ZigBee coordinator and
and remote patient monitoring system. several terminal nodes with ZigBee module. In Figure 1, the
embedded Web Server runs on an ARM9-based embedded
Keywords-Embedded Web Server; Remote contro syteml; board. The ZigBee coordinator, which starts the network,
boa; CGI; ZigBee
communicates with both the Web Server through RS232 and
other ZigBee modules. The user can visit the embedded Web
I. INTRODUCTION Server via internet to get data information or send commands.
Nowadays, wireless remote control system provides
more convenience to our daily life than ever before. In this User
system, a gateway is required to connect many appliances
(e.g. robots and cameras) to the Internet. A personal
computer (PC) or a workstation is generally used as a
gateway, which is big and expensive. In this paper, an Internet End device
embedded Web Server is utilized since it is a small-size, Device1

low-cost and general-purpose Web Server. It can transfer RS232 Device2

not only the state information of the embedded systems,
Coordinator
such as a system working statistics, current configuration Embedded Web Server

and operation results, to a Web browser, but also user DeviceN

commands from a web browser to the embedded systems.
The embedded Web Servers can monitor and control the Figure 1. The system architeture.
embedded applications by any standard browser so that
users can implement the operation from any remote places. The hardware platform of the system is shown as Figure
Moreover, in order to degrade target programming 2. In Figure 2, the main components are selected as follows:
procedure largely and maintain the system easily, a CPU is S3C2410 ARM9TDMI which is produced by
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server is integrated. SAMSUNG; External memory includes a 64M Bytes NAND
Wireless communication is a promising technique Flash and a 64M Bytes SDRAM; RTL8019AS is chosen as
which has been widely applied to various fields. ZigBee- the net port IC; The ZigBee modoul is implemented by
based wireless network communication technique can CC2430, which is a system on chip (SoC) CMOS solution
provide low power consumption, low cost and network

978-1-4244-6893-5/$26.00 C 2010 IEEE V3-373

 2010 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing Systems (ICSPS)

that integrates a high performance radio transceiver with B. CGI

2.4GHz and an Industrial 8051 MCU. CGI defines a way for a Web Server to interact with
external content-generating programs, which are often
referred to as CGI programs or CGI scripts. However, CGI is
not a program or a programming language. It is a simple
protocol that can be used to communicate between Web
forms and our programs. A CGI script can be written in any
language that can read STDIN, write to STDOUT, and read
environment variables, including C, Perl, or even shell script.
For embedded systems, C should be chosen since it can be
executed on the embedded board. Also, C is suitable for the
bigger and more complex programs. In general, the most
common way for CGI to work is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 2. The hardwareware of the system.

III. EMBEDDED WEBSERVER

Boa is an open-source, small-footprint Web Server
written in C and uses the GNU autoconf system to provide a
portable code base. It also has minimal resource
requirements and offers extremely high performance, which
currently seems to be the favorite Web Server in the
embedded crowd. Unlike the traditional Web Servers, boa is
single-tasking, which means that it must fork separate
processes to execute Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Figure 3. Flowchart of CGI.
scripts. Moreover, boa is specifically designed to run on
UNIX-like systems. Therefore, in this paper, boa is selected First, the Web client or user enters the input data. When
as the Web Server. And the embedded Linux is chosen as the user submits the form data, the CGI script receives it as a
our operation system. set of name-value pairs, which can be expressed as one of the
A. Boa Porting following two formats:
"name1=value1&name2=value2&name3=value3…"
Boa is very easy to install and configure. The software "name1=value1;name2=value2;name3=value3…"
is downloaded and unpacked by using tar-xvzf. In order to The names are defined in the INPUT tags (or SELECT or
change the default SERVER_ROOT, the defines.h file TEXTAREA tags). And the values are whatever user type in
should be edited in the src directory. The Makfile is or select. The data is obtained by reading the user form input.
obtained by running the configure script (./configure) under The scheme of getting the data depends on the HTTP method
the source folder. Because boa will finally run on the which is used in the form. For GET submissions, data is in
embedded board, the Makefile is also required to be edited the environment variable, QUERY_STRING; while, for
using the Cross-Compiler as: POST submissions, data is read from STDIN. Finally, the
CC=/usr/local/arm/2.95.3/bin/arm-linux-gcc; HTML is sent to the user by STDOUT according to the user
CPP=/usr/local/arm/2.95.3/bin/arm-linux-gcc̢E. input when CGI script is done. A simple of HTML response
Then, by running make, a program is obtained which can is shown as follows:
be executed on the ARM board. In order to guarantee boa printf ( "Content- type: text/html\n\n") ;
run correctly, the file, boa.conf, should be edited to set up printf( "<html>
local configuration. Here is a quick summary of the most <head>
important parameters. <title>Test</title>
x Port allows you to specify the port to listen on. </head>
x User and Group allow you to specify the name of <body>
the user and group Boa runs as. <a href=\ "http://ww.dlut.edu.cn\ ">
x ErrorLog and AccessLog allow you to specify http://www.dlut.edu.cn</a>
where the log files are located. </body>
x DocumentRoot specifies the root directory of the </html>");
HTML files. For our system, the embedded board which works as an
embedded Web Server will communicate with a ZigBee
x DirectoryIndex specifies the name of the index file.
module through RS232.
This is traditionally index.html.
x ScriptAlias is used to specify where CGI scripts can IV. ZIBGEE TEDHNOLOGY
reside.
ZigBee is a wireless network standard defined by ZigBee
Alliance and based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which

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focuses on low rate, low cost, low power consumption, C. Software

robustness, reliability and self-healing. The applications Z-Stack is TI's ZigBee compliant protocol stack for IEEE
utilizing ZigBee standard include consumer electronics, 802.15.4 products and platforms including the CC2430
home and building automation, industrial controls, PC System-on-Chip and platform based on the CC2420
peripherals, medical sensor applications, toys and games. transceiver and TI's MSP430. Z-Stack has been awarded the
A. Device Types ZigBee Alliance's golden unit status by the ZigBee test house
TUV Rheinland and is used by thousands of ZigBee
There are three types of logical devices in a ZigBee developers worldwide. Figure 6 shows the project structure
network: coordinator, router and end-device, which is in the Z-Stack.
illustrated in Figure 4. A ZigBee network consists of a
coordinator node, multiple routers and end device nodes.
According to the function, these devices can be divided in
full function devices (FFD) and reduced function devices
(RFD). The FFD have all the operations, while, the RFD do
not have. Moreover, the FFD device can work as a
coordinator or a router in a ZigBee network, but the RFD
device can only be the end devices.


Figure 6. The structure of Z-Stack.
Figure 4. Coordinator, roture, and end device.
The software design includes two parts: the coordinator
design and the end device design. The coordinator node
B. Network Ttopologies
chooses a channel and a network identifier (also called PAN
There are three different network topologies that are ID) and then starts the network. The channel selection is
supported by ZigBee, namely the star network topology, defined as,
mesh network topology and cluster tree or hybrid network Fc 2405  5  k  11 ( MHz ) ˄1˅
topology. Each has its own advantages and can be applied in
In the codes, X is set to 11 in order to get 2.405GHz,
different situations. Considering the complexity, the star
which is programmed as,
network is chosen, which is shown in Figure 5. In the star
#define MAC_RADIO_SET_CHANNEL(x)
network topology, the network is controlled by one single st( FSCTRLL = FREQ_2405MHZ + 5 * ((x) - 11); )
device called the ZigBee coordinator which is responsible PAN ID can be set in f8wConfig.Cfg shown in Figure 7.
for initiating and maintaining the devices in the network.
And all other devices are known as end devices.

Figure 7. PAN ID configuration.

Figure 5. Star topology
As for the star topology, the coordinator should be set up
as follows:
#define STACK_PROFILE_ID ENERIC_STAR

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#define MAX_NODE_DEPTH 1 and place those devices anywhere. The designed testing
byte CskipRtrs[MAX_NODE_DEPTH+1] = {0,0} system shows the qualities of good stability, low power
byte CskipChldrn[MAX_NODE_DEPTH+1] = {255,0} consumption, small size and easy to be used.

According to the Z-Stack, the user application programs REFERENCES

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