IOT BASED VEHICLE POLLUTION MONITORING AND ALERTING

SYSTEM USING THINGSPEAK SERVER AND GSM

R.YADAGIRI RAO 1 , Prof. G.PUSHPA CHAKRAPANI2
1
Head of the Dept. Humanities and Sciences, Sri Indu institute of Engineering and Technology, Ibrahimpatnam, Hyderabad.
2
Prof. Of Physics, Dean, Faculty of sciences, Dr.B.R Ambedkar Open university, Jubliee hills , Hyderabad

Abstract: we are going to make an IOT Based Air Pollution Monitoring System in which we will monitor the Air Quality over
a web server using internet and will trigger a alarm when the air quality goes down beyond a certain level, means when there are
sufficient amount of harmful gases are present in the air like CO2, smoke, alcohol, benzene and NH3. It will show the air
quality in PPM on the LCD and as well as on webpage so that we can monitor it very easily. Previously we have built the LPG
detector using MQ6 sensor and Smoke detector using MQ2 sensor but this time we have used MQ135 sensor which is the best
choice for monitoring Air Quality as it can detects most harmful gases and can measure their amount accurately. In this IOT
project, you can monitor the pollution level from anywhere using your computer or mobile. We can install this system anywhere
and can also trigger some device when pollution goes beyond some level, like we can switch on the Exhaust fan or can send
alert SMS/mail to the user.
Index Terms: Arduino, Gas sensor, Buzzer.

INTRODUCTION MQ135 (sensitive to CO2, NOx, SO2, NH3, and benzene),

BME280 (Humidity
Considering the daily newspapers and other electronic or
print media, they show the devastating news about people are
becoming sick and the climate is changing such a way that it
becomes miserable for living people. All people are suffering
from the curse of climate change. The main reason for and Temperature sensor) and SDS011 (Optical dust particle
people’s health issues and climate change is air pollution. sensor) and a dust collector. The system can monitor the
The air pollution has brought changes in climate like global gases, toxic level of Particulate Matter (PM), and air quality
warming, global dimming, over raining, drought, storms, index
acid rain, foggy weather, etc. In recent days, the various (AQI) of the industrial workplaces and display it on the IoT
pollutions like water pollution, soil contamination, noise ThingSpeak dashboard. The real-time system can turn on the
pollution, radioactive contamination, plastic pollution, dust collector/fan units when pollution goes beyond the level
thermal pollution, and other pollution are affecting both and send the alert message to the control room authorities.
human health and cause environmental problems. Although This will lead to early gas leak detection which prevents
air pollution has the highest priority compared to others major accidents in the industry. Recently, most of the major
because air is the most useful for every living thing. The
living things on earth are suffering from bronchitis, heart
diseases, pneumonia, lung and aggravated asthma due to
insufficient air quality.
The air quality has to be maintained for protecting human
health, the World Health Organization (WHO) provides the
threshold pollutant concentration levels to limit harmful
effects on human mortality. The daily and annual limits of
fine PM (PM2.5, which has a diameter less than or equal to
2.5 μm) do not exceed 25 and 50 µg/m 3, respectively.
However, there is no specific recommendation for safe PM
limits concerning cognition and mental health [1]. The
Lancet Planetary Health journal declared that with eighteen
percent of the global population, India suffered twenty six
percent of premature mortality and health loss attributable to
air pollution globally. In 2017, half of the deaths (aged less
than 70) in India due to air pollution. It asserted that seventy
seven percent of India's population is exposed to above
NAAQS safe limit of outdoor air pollution levels.
The research is going on in this serious issue to monitor
and control the quality of air. The main purpose of this
system is to estimate the quality of air for people and any
other living thing which exists on the earth [2]. The proposed cities in the world are polluted.
embedded system model includes various sensors like
MOTIVATION FOR THE PROPOSED WORK life. They are air, water, and food. But recently the air is
polluted more as compared to water and food. Air pollution
There are three things that a human needs for a healthy
causes premature death of human being and it is a significant
 risk factor for the number of pollution-related diseases with the help of the ESP32 module where all the data are
including heart disease, respiratory infections, stroke and stored in the cloud [5]. The system process can be done
lung cancer [3]. The health problem caused by air pollution based on the sequence given in figure 2. The system
includes coughing, difficulty in breathing, wheezing, analyzes the air quality in real-time and log data to a remote
asthma, and worsening of existing respiratory and cardiac server, and maintains the data updating over the internet. Air
conditions. These may result in increased medication use, quality measurements have taken based on the ppm (Parts
more hospital admissions and premature death. Thus, air per Million) metrics and analyzed. The result is displayed on
pollution is an important problem which is faced by all the display interface and could be accessed via the cloud on
countries in the world. It must be reduced as much as smart mobile devices using Virtuino. If the threshold values
possible. for pollution levels are exceeded, the application sends
There are more pollutions e.g. water pollution, noise notifications to the users. The users able to monitor the
pollution, plastic pollution, soil contamination but air measured parameters on their smart phones. The air quality
pollution is the most alarming issue and this should be measurements are sent to the cloud server in every one-
studied for the sake of saving the world. The most open-air minute intervals. The figure 3 shows the list of components
pollution sources include industries, vehicles, power used in the proposed system.
generation, building heating systems, solid waste, and A. Node MCU (ESP32)
agriculture incineration. Besides, more than four billion ESP32 is a series of low-power and low-cost SoC with
people in the world rely on polluting technologies and integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth microcontroller module for
discharge pollutants to outdoors from fuels (including smart system implementation and IoT applications. The
biomass, coal) for household cooking, and lighting, etc. ESP32 MCU employs a Harvard Tensilica Xtensa LX6 32-bit
It basically figured out the emission rate of poisonous dual-core processor capable of operating frequency up to 240
gasses which are responsible for air pollution. The low-cost MHz and includes in-built low-noise receive amplifier,
air quality system was discussed in 2008 because at that antenna switches, power amplifier, powerful CPU, power-
time the sensors were quite expensive and also the system management modules, and filters [6].
[4]. The industrial air pollution monitoring system for safety B. Gas Sensor MQ135
and health enhancement was introduced to know the The MQ135 gas sensor senses gases like oxygen, alcohols,
hazardous gasses and their impact. By using the mobile ammonia nitrogen, sulfide, aromatic compounds and smoke.
GPRS system the air pollution information could be This gas sensor utilizes a small heater inside with an
transmitted. Wireless sensor network-based pollution electrochemical sensor and it is sensitive to a range of gasses
monitoring system in metropolitan cities was introduced to in an environment at room temperature [7]. MQ135 sensor
know the air quality. The pollution Dynamic Monitoring has lower conductivity in clean air. When the target exposé to
System is also done previously. We need a smart gas, the sensor conductivity increases with increasing the gas
environment monitoring system with IoT support to know concentration. An electronic circuit is used to convert the
the information on the mobile itself.
HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION
The proposed model for the IoT based air quality monitor
and control using an embedded system is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. The proposed model for the IoT based air quality
monitor and control using embedded system.

Fig. 2.Sequence of the system process.

The device is set up to collect the environmental data

through various sensors and these data are acts as an input
to the program sequence to update the output. The sensors
receive analog data from the environment which is
converted into digital by itself and then sent to the server
change of gas concentration to the corresponding conductivity
output. This sensor used to sense the presence of gases like
NH3, sulphide, benzene, and CO2. The figure 5 shows the
ppm values of CO2 from gas sensor MQ135. If the ppm
value exceeds 450, the MCU produced sound using buzzer
and turn on the exhaust fan.

This project uses the concept of IoT for monitoring and

controlling the system using a ThingSpeak cloud server. The
Node MCU is configured to transfer the measured data of all
sensors on a remote server. The online application provides
global access to the measured data using any device that has
internet connection capability. Data collected from the
Fig. 5.The char for ppm values from gas sensor MQ135. sensors are analyzed and passed the information in the form
of a string to update the web page in the remote server. The
C. Buzzer system also uses an android app called Virtuino which shows
Typical uses of buzzer and beeper or alarm device the sensors data graphically. In this app, one has to subscribe
confirm the inputs and device outputs by making sound. It to a topic and publish a message of the specific function.
may be mechanical, piezoelectric and electromechanical Virtuino allows sending the SMS when the sensor reading
component. crosses a threshold.

D. Environmental Sensor BME280 A. ThingSpeak

The BME280 is an integrated environmental MEMS ThingSpeak is an IoT analytics platform service that allows
sensor that is specifically developed for mobile applications aggregating, visualizing and analyzing live data streams in the
by Bosch Sensortec. The size, low power consumption and cloud. ThingSpeak provides instant visualizations of
operating temperature of about -40 to 85 °C are key design information or data posted by the peripheral devices.
features. This unit has high linearity and high accuracy to ThingSpeak fits in the cloud part and provides a platform to
measure pressure, humidity, and temperature with the help quickly data collection and analyze data from internet-
of I2C and SPI communication protocol. It is designed for connected sensor nodes. Some of the key features of
low current consumption (1.8 μA) with average current ThingSpeak include the ability to [9]:
consumption in sleep mode is 0.1 μA, high stability with  Configure the application devices to send data to
multi-function, and high EMC robustness. BME280 is ThingSpeak Easily using internet protocol.
housed in a compact 8-Pin LGA with a metal package and a  Visualize the any sensor data on screen in real-time.
footprint of only 2.5x2.5 mm² with a height of 0.93  Aggregate data on-demand from third-party sources.
millimeters. The figure 4 shows humidity in percentage and  MATLAB is used to make sense the IoT data.
temperature in degree Celsius readings from environmental  IoT analytics based on schedules or events.
sensor BME280.  Prototype and build IoT systems without developing
web software.
B. Virtuino
Virtuino is a Human Machine Interface platform for IoT
servers, Arduino ESP8266 or similar boards, MQTT brokers,
and Modbus RTU bridge servers. The figure 5 shows the
Virtuino Mobile App Screen. It allows creating amazing
virtual screen on the tablet or phone to monitor and control
the embedded system via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or Web. It also
supports to create visual interfaces with widgets like buttons,
switches, LEDs, value displays, instruments, meters, etc. In
Fig. 4.Humidity and Temperature Charts. this project, Virtuino Modbus is used which has an HMI for
Modbus servers and supports ThingSpeak cloud server &
TCP/IP protocol.

SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION FOR IOT AIR POLLUTION MONITORING AND ITS

 IMPORTANCE
Air quality monitoring is essential for major public and
private industrial sectors to prevent air pollution and
sleepiness and stagnant, stale, stuffy air and if exceeds beyond
measure emission sources. It preserves the greenhouse 2000 PPM then it can cause increased heart rate and many other
effect. Industrial operators use monitoring equipment diseases. When the value will be less than 1000 PPM, then the
for air quality devices. Some of them can measure ppb LCD and webpage will display “Fresh Air”. Whenever the
levels and it is portable units. The systems for air value will increase 1000 PPM, then the buzzer will start
quality monitoring with data sharing are used widely beeping and the LCD and webpage will display “Poor Air,
in outdoor ambient applications. The impact of RH Open Windows”. If it will increase 2000 then the buzzer will
and T from the sensor response is tested by analyzing keep beeping and the LCD and webpage will display “Danger!
the relationship between observed PM2.5 sensor error Move to fresh Air”.
(sensor observation minus reference data) and air
RESULTS AND DISCUSSONS
temperature as well as RH.
We have to connect the Wi-Fi of your ESP8266 device first
A. Air Quality Index (AQI) Before uploading the code. After uploading, we will open the
An air quality index (AQI) is a number which is used by serial monitor and it will dispilay the IP address which is
the government authorities to communicate the public shown.
about the current level of air pollution on a daily basis. It is
a measure of air quality impacts their health. An increase
in the AQI value tells that an increase in level of air
pollution and the greater the severe adverse health effects.
The concept of AQI is widely used in many countries in
different point scales to report air quality [11].
B. Setting-up Base Standard
To measure the quality of air in the environment, we set
the AQI category as a base standard of our system. It can
identify the range of pollution and take necessary steps for
future betterment. There are six AQI categories were given
by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate
Change, Government of India is shown in table 1 [12]. The
AQI values and categories as well as associated health
impacts identifying faulty standards and environmental Fig 7:IP ADDRESS
conditions.
Type this IP address in your browser, it will show you the output
Table-I: AQI category of India as shown below. You will have to refresh the page again if
you want to see the current Air Quality Value in PPM

When the AQI range is between 0-50 it is good and is

shown in pure green color, when the AQI range is 51-
100 it means that the data are satisfactory and are
shown in greenish color. After that if the data range is
101-200 it will indicate that the area is moderately
polluted and after that, if the range exceeds over 201 it
means that the area has become polluted badly and
when it goes to the range of 301-400, the AQI
category becomes very poor and the area becomes
highly polluted and unsafe for the human beings [13].
Fig 8:AIR QUALITY STATUS
The MQ135 sensor can sense NH3, NOx, alcohol, Benzene,
smoke, CO2 and some other gases, so it is perfect gas sensor We have setup a local server to demonstrate its working, But to
for our Air Quality Monitoring Project. When we will monitor the air quality from anywhere in the world, we need
connect it to Arduino then it will sense the gases, and we will to forward the port 80 (used for HTTP or internet) to our
get the Pollution level in PPM (parts per million). MQ135 gas local or private IP address (192.168*) of our device. After
sensor gives the output in form of voltage levels and we need port forwarding all the incoming connections will be
to convert it into PPM. So for converting the output in PPM, forwarded to this local address and you can open above
here we have used a library for MQ135 sensor, it is explained shown webpage by just entering the public IP address of
in detail in “Code Explanation” section below Sensor was your internet from anywhere. We can forward the port by
giving us value of 90 when there was no gas near it and the logging into your router (192.168.1.1) and we can find the
safe level of air quality is 350 PPM and it should not exceed option to setup the port forwarding
1000 PPM. When it exceeds the limit of 1000 PPM, then it
starts cause Headaches,
 CONCLUSION

By keeping the embedded devices in the environment for

monitoring enables self protection (i.e., smart
environment) to the environment. To implement this need to 12. waj, Himanshu Agrawal, Vinay Anand Tikkiwal, Arun Kumar, An IoT
deploy the sensor devices in the environment for collecting the Based Air Pollution Monitoring System
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atmospheric temperature inversions, Journal of Environmental
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collected data and analysis results will be available to the end 14. Robert Zalman, Veronika Olesnanikova, Peter Sevcik, Peter Sarafin,
user through the Wi-Fi. The smart way to monitor Monitoring of CO2 Amount in Closed Objects via WSN, Proceedings of
the Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information
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architecture functions of different modules were discussed. Spadaro, Yurika Nishioka, Philipp Preiss, Thomas E. McKone, Arpad
The noise and air pollution monitoring system with Horvath, and Olivier Jolliet, Intake Fraction for Particulate Matter:
Recommendations for Life Cycle Impact Assessment, Environmental
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sensor parameters to the cloud (Google Spread 16. Hong Chen, Qiongsi Li MMath, Jay S Kaufman, Jun Wang, Ray
Sheets). This data will be helpful for future analysis Copes, Yushan Su, Tarik Benmarhnia, Effect of air quality alerts on
human health: a regression discontinuity analysis in Toronto, Canada,
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cost solution for continuous monitoring of
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