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IoT Enabled Real Time Bolt based Indoor Air Quality Monitoring System

Conference Paper · September 2018

DOI: 10.1109/CCTES.2018.8674076

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2018 International Conference on Computational and Characterization Techniques in Engineering & Sciences (CCTES)
Integral University, Lucknow, India, Sep 14-15, 2018

IoT Enabled Real Time Bolt based Indoor Air

Quality Monitoring System
Pallavi Asthana Sumita Mishra
Amity School of Engineering and Technology Amity School of Engineering and Technology
Amity University, Amity University,
Lucknow Campus Lucknow Campus
mishra.sumita@gmail.com

Abstract— Indoor air pollution results in substantially harmful

effects on human health. In this paper, an Bolt based Internet of
Things (IoT) system has been devised to monitor in real time
the basic pollutants like Carbon dioxide, Carbon mono oxide,
Particulate matter, in indoor environment of university
premises. Bolt based IoT system provides pollution level
information directly to smart device in real time. In the later
segment of the paper, authors have also suggested the
measures to improve the quality of air for better health of the
students that may positively impact their academic
performance.

Keywords—Indoor Air Quality, Internet of Things, Bolt

based Cloud, Fig. 1. Level of Poor IAQ in various parts of World[5]

I. INTRODUCTION
In the era of fast data transmission over internet, Internet
of Things has gained a lot of momentum. This technology
enables various devices to communicate over wireless
Channel and store the data on a cloud through wi-fi. IoT may
be utilized to monitor indoor air quality in real time. There
are various factors in university environment that add to the
poor quality of Indoor air like fresh paints, Polish on the
wooden surface, photocopier machines etc. [1]. When the
level of the containments increases beyond the permissible
levels in the environment can affect various organs of human
body. Many chemicals that cause the deterioration of air
quality are inhaled and absorbed in human body instigating
allergies, sensitivities etc. Poor air quality may have much Fig. 2. Percentage of death from ambient Particulate Matter pollution in
adverse effect on the younger generation specially those India [7].
residing in University premises. Most of the student’s time is
spent indoors and in air-conditioned environment where IoT based indoor air quality monitoring has gathered a lot
there is limited scope of fresh air circulation [2], it is of attention and various researchers have developed several
imperative to monitor the indoor air quality for increased microcontroller-based systems [8][9]. Temporal variation of
levels of O3,No2, CO, Co2 and VOC. These gases are toxic in CO and CO2 concentration in indoor environment has been
nature [3] and it may be one of the reasons for various illness investigated in detail by Kiuriski et al [10]. The study
in students resulting in poor concentration, irregular concludes the level of these two gases increases to a peak
attendance in class and poor academic performance. It is value at certain times in a day and proper ventilation could
therefore important to understand the actual acceptable levels help in reducing the harmful effect of these gases within the
of various contaminants that are being rated by different confined environment. Fioccola et al [11] built a system
agencies [4]. based on Arduino board. Although the system used cloud
Fig 1 depicts the level of indoor air quality in various platform, however, the presented system is not wireless.
countries across the world. It may be observed from the Further in the readings obtained from sensor are not stored
locally hence in case of interruption in internet connection
figure that condition of indoor air quality in India is quite
the acquired data will be lost. Postolache et al. [12] presented
alarming. a Wi-Fi indoor air quality management system with multiple
It has been also found that persistent level of enhanced sensor nodes. The system employed LabVIEW web server
containment in air can prove to be fatal for all the living and laptop as mainprocessing and control unit which
being including Humans [6]. Therefore, it has been observed performed neural network analysis on the received from each
that air pollution is one of the major causes of the global sensor node.
deaths and premature deaths.

978-1-5386-4254-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 36

 Most of the above studies are have not considered
possible remedies that may be employed to reduce the
harmful effect of toxic gases. In this work, authors have
devised an IOT based Air contamination observing
framework using Bolt that monitors the air quality in real
time using sensors for measuring Air Quality parameters.
Cloud computing platform is utilized to store and process
data. The system will generate an alert when quality of air
deteriorates beyond the permissible limits. If the indoor air
quality is detected at university level, preventive measures
may be implemented which will reduce potential risks to
students and staff. Further, analysis of causes of increased
pollutants at an instant of time would benefit those
potentially endangered by significantly high concentrations
of air pollutants. The rest of the paper is organized as follows
section II deal with system design, section III provides the
results, methods to improve air quality are discussed in
section IV and section V concludes the paper.
II. SYSTEM DESIGN FOR THE MONITORING OF IAQ
The Indoor air quality monitoring system proposed in this
work has two main units namely MQ-135 sensor assembly
and Bolt based IoT board. Some of the important features
that need to be considered for selecting IoT platform for a
particular application are the size of memory, number of
general purpose input pins, peripheral communications such
as SPI, I2C, USART and its communication capacities like
Ethernet, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee etc. Bolt is one of the
most powerful IoT enabled boards that satisfies the
requirement of present application. It consists of a 32-bit
RISC CPU: Tensilica Xtensa LX106 ,64 KB internal
memory, 96 KB memory for data storage and 4MB Flash
memory. Bolt can generate its own Wi-fi network via
connectivity module ESP8266.Architecture of the proposed
IoT Indoor Air Quality management system is shown in Fig.
3.Data generated by the Indoor Air Quality sensor is first
received and processed by PIC16F877A, which isa40-pin
microcontroller. It has five ports, three timers and it can
Fig. 3. Architecture of the Indoor Air Quality Monitoring System
support various communication protocols. Some of the
important supported protocols are Parallel protocol, Serial
Protocol and Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) protocol. The
gateway for data transmission to the cloud was built using
connectivity module ESP8266 on the Bolt IoT board. The
gateway operates on TCP/IP protocol. The sensor data is
converted to IP packets and forwarded over the Wi-Fi
network. Transmitted data is stored and further processed at
Bolt cloud and an alert is generated if air quality deteriorates
below a certain threshold.
37
A. Gas Sensor Module MQ135
To monitor the Internal Air quality, MQ 135 Sensor has
been used in this project. This sensor has a wide detecting
scope, highly sensitive and has simple circuit. This sensor is
particularly suitable for detecting Ammonia, Smoke, VOCs
like Benzene [13]. Sensor senses the quality of air by
measuring the levels of each of the above-mentioned
pollutants. It produces output in the range of 0-5V for both
digital and analog systems. The analog pin of this is TTL
driven, hence, it can be easily connected with any
microcontroller at 5V.Its dimensions are within the range of
40.0mm*21.0mm that makes its suitable to connect in any
system. This sensor applies SnO2 whose resistance is higher
in clean air, whenever there is an increase in pollution
contents in the air, resistance of the sensor decreases, and
this effect is measured. It can provide output in both analog
and digital Forms [14]. Its sensitivity can also be varied by
using potentiometer. Resistance of the sensor is found by
using (1) where the value of Rsis calculated with reference
to the value of the resistance in fresh air which is found by
datasheet. Initially, sensor is calibrated to find the values of
R0. Where
Ro: sensor resistance at 100ppm of gas in the clean air
Rs: Value of sensor resistance at various gas
concentration.
ܴ‫ ܮ‬ൌ ʹͲ‫ܭ‬ȳ
Vc =Circuit voltage
ܴ݁‫ݎ݋ݏ݊݁ݏ݂݋݁ܿ݊ܽݐݏ݅ݏ‬ǣ ܴ‫ ݏ‬ൌ ሺܸܿ Τܸ‫ ݐݑ݋‬െ ͳሻ ‫… ܮܴ כ‬..(1)
Vout = Voltage corresponding to Analog Value provided
by sensor. Next step after calculation of Rs is determination
of Part Per Million (PPM) of pollutant. To measure PPM
using MQ-135 sensor we need to investigate the (Rs/Ro) v/s
PPM graph taken from the MQ135 datasheet as shown in
Fig.4.
Fig. 4. Data sheet of MQ135 to find the ratio of Rs/R0
When the PPM value is of a contaminant is <90, air
quality is deemed good [15]. On the other hand, when this
level increases to 1000PPM, it may cause health problems
like migraine, languor, torpid etc. The quality of air becomes
alarming, when the level of containments rises beyond
2000PPM, it then causes acute health issues for the
individuals who are continuously exposed in such a poor
quality of air and alarm is triggered if pollutant level reaches
this value.
B. BOLT Wi-Fi Module and Cloud
Fig. 5. Wi-fi enabled Bolt IoT Platform
Cloud computing is the platform of using remote servers
on the internet to control, store and process data in its place
of using a Personal Computer. It is an integral part of IoT
based systems. Bolt Wi-Fi module is shown in Fig. 5. It is
configured using Netplug application that shows the list of all
the devices connected and then using a password and wi-fi
name, procedure can be configured [16].The data received by
sensor is saved in PIC16F877A and it is uploaded on the
bolt cloud via Bolt Wi-Fi Module. The system utilizes Bolt’s
quick alert system that is configured to send alerts to the
contacts listed when the threshold is crossed.
III. RESULTS
System was installed in the indoor premises of the
university and the data was collected for the time duration of
one week. A typical variation of pollutant level is shown in
Fig. 6.
Fig. 6. Level of pollutants as shown in mobile app through Bolt.
38
It was observed that although the levels of various
pollutants were continuously varying, but it was not beyond
the maximum limit that can cause air pollution related health
issues to the students. Only one instance was such that the
pollutant concentration reached alarming levels as shown in
Fig. 7. Fig. 8 shows the pollutant concentration for a week of
observation plotted using the line graphs.
If contamination level is more than the permissible limit
than the graph shown on the mobile will turn red in color and
it also starts a buzzer to alert the user. User can open the
windows or doors for the circulation of fresh air.
The output of the bolt-based monitoring system has been
analyzed and major pollutants in University premises are
plotted for one-week duration as shown in figure 6.
Fig. 7. Alarming level of contamination
Fig. 8. Major Pollutant Concentration in University Premises
IV. METHODS OF CONTROLLING INDOOR POLLUTION:
Various methods that can be implemented on local level
for improving the quality of air are
(a) Save energy: saving energy leads to the decrease in
air contaminating particulates and carbon emission that
pollute the air.
(b) Utilize eco-friendly items: By using the cleanest and
greenest items that contains less amount of harmful
chemicals.
(c) Avoid Smoking tobacco inside: Smoke of tobacco
contains lead, arsenic, alkali and carbon-monoxide. Increased
concentration of these particulates causes great trouble in
breathing.
(d) Indoor plants: Plants have the capacity to clean the
quality of vaporous contaminations and some indoor plants
are also highly efficient for this purpose.
V. CONCLUSION
Quality of air monitoring is a planned application space
which is of specific incentive to the society. For monitoring
the quality of air from numerous sources by utilizing the
demonstrative ability of the system is extremely useful. This
project is very helpful as the Quality of the air can be
monitored over the Android base mobile system and it also
alarms an produces warning whenever the IAQ decreased
beyond the permissible limit. This system is very useful in
the arrangement like universities, hospitals, warehouses
where circulation of outdoor air is provided in constrained
manner and even a small degradation in the quality of air
may severely affect the performance of the individual
residing in the area in terms of breathing troubles. The
system was tested with one sensor node, it may easily adapt
to include more sensing nodes.
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