A low-cost IoT based environmental monitoring system. A citizen approach to pollution awareness

Abstract

The concept of quality of life is used as a measure of the welfare of a society, highlighting the relationship between the environment and health, mainly associated with pollution. Hence the importance of monitoring and communicating its results, in a timely manner, to the community. But often the last part of the process fail, there is a lack of communication between data, information and community. Using open hardware and open source tools, and based on the Internet of things concept, a low-cost citizen monitoring network, that cost less than US $ 150 was implemented. This network measures Carbon Monoxide (CO), Temperature, Relative Humidity, Particulate Matter 2.5, Noise and UV radiation, with a reading frequency of every 40 s and a hibernation period of 15 min. The environmental monitoring network gather information from the environment, through sensors, and then store it in a MySQL database, to finally be deployed in a web site hosted on a local web server Apache, implemented ex professo. In effect, the system is able to deliver geotagged information and the state of environmental pollution to the citizens.