AWS and IoT Lab Monitoring System for TechInsights

Posted on Thursday, November 25th, 2021

Client	Tech Insights (Alexander Sorkin)
Professor(s)	Abdullah Kadri,
Program	Computer Eng. Technology – Comp. Science
Students	Daniel Martinez (Team Lead) Anwis O’Niell Scott Parks Ivan Voinov Phil Bédard Schami

Project Description:

Many tech companies likely have expensive lab equipment that are highly susceptible to extreme environmental attributes. The problem is that staff do not always realize when the lab environment is not suitable for the equipment. Our project records attributes in the lab and will notify staff if something falls outside of a safe range for the equipment.

We are using Amazon Web Services, and the LoRa protocol for Internet of Things.
The goal of the monitoring system is to track the temperature changes, humidity, air quality and gas tank pressure of the lab environment. The system will assist in sustaining sensitive technologies and equipment located in TechInsights’ laboratories for their analytical operations. This involves programming an Arduino compatible micro-controller to interact with temperature, gas, and pressure sensors. This micro-controller will need to communicate with AWS (Amazon Web Services) via LoRa protocol.

We are recording sensor inputs using arduino-compatible micro-controllers and various sensors for temperature and humidity, along with support for generic analog sensors for other readings such as gas pressure. These micro-controllers are equipped with LoRa capability

LoRa stands for “Long Range”. This protocol was designed for long range and stability and for use in IoT application. Using LoRa we can transmit signals at distances of over 10km in optimal condition, and 2km in dense urban environments. This is accomplished by using low frequency radio waves. The tradeoff with LoRa is gaining range but loosing bandwidth. There is still more than enough bandwidth for IoT applications.

AWS is a cloud computing platform that handles the processing of sensor readings and storing the readings in a database. AWS additionally hosts our web dashboard so that the sensor readings can be monitored by the team at TechInsights and sends automated alerts when sensor readings reach critical levels

Finally, we produced an intuitive front-end dashboard that allows the various sensors to be monitored. This dashboard presents data using a simple line graph, so that the history of multiple sensors can all be visualized at once.