Development of Data Acquisition System for Real-Time Monitoring Using a Smartphone

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to develop and deploy a distributed data acquisition system to acquire different environmental parameters using sensors. The available literature has neglected to account for the role that the concept of real-time monitoring plays, a shortcoming this paper addresses. We explored to what extent, and in what ways can real-time monitoring improve the concept of data acquisition. We do so to better enable access to data from anywhere in the world using smartphones. In this paper, a distributed data acquisition system application for real-time monitoring using smartphone is presented. The system has two sensors, namely, DHT22 to measure both temperature and humidity, and BMP180 Barometer sensor which measures temperature, pressure, and altitude. For data acquisition, a Raspberry Pi is used, which acquires data from the sensors that are connected to it. The Raspberry Pi has in-built Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) which enables it to communicate to the outside world. A webserver, in the form of Thingspeak is created and runs on the Raspberry Pi to allow real-time monitoring from a smartphone or any smart mobile device. The user can log into Thingspeak and monitor the temperature, humidity, air pressure and altitude of the environment. This paper gives an overview over existing literature, presenting the evolution of the real-time data acquisition in a full spectrum of different industries, and focusing on a particular subset that deals with digital-based data acquisition. In this study we explored people's conceptions of sensing and analysis capabilities of different data acquisition systems, their accuracy and reliability in big and small industries.