Development of Cloud Based Light Intensity Monitoring System Using Raspberry Pi

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
There are many applications for Light Meters such as measuring and maintaining
adequate light levels in schools, hospitals, production areas, laboratories, passageways
and more. Adequate light levels in the work place ensure a healthier and safer
environment for people. Some of important locations and light intensity is shown in
TABLE I.

TABLE 1 OPTIMUM AVERAGE LlGHT INTENSITY AT VARJOUS

LOCATIONS
Consider following applications as an example
A. Traffic Lighting System
To ensure safety on the road, traffic lights need to be clearly visible for road users. The
light intensity has to be sufficient under every (weather) condition, which set in legal
standards. Over the course of time, the luminous intensity of traffic lights slowly
decreases. Possible reasons are pollution of lenses or reflectors, aging of the light source
or individual LED failure. Remote monitoring enables the road authority to carry out
timely services, in such a way that traffic lights keep satisfying the statutory rules for
optimal traffic safety.
B. Poultry Industry
Light Intensity is an important management factor in poultry industry to obtain optimal
production. The intensity depends upon the age and type of housing being used, and type
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of chicken, be it broiler, breeder or layer. With blackout housing both male and female
can be exposed to 3.5 fc from day one to day six and then placed on 1 fc to 19 or 20
weeks. After 19 - 20 weeks the broiler breeders can be exposed to about 3.0 to 5.0 fc
during the entire production period. Layers should be exposed to about .5 to 1.5 fc (One
foot-candle = 10.76 lux) for better production [4-6].
C. Plants Growth
Deficient light intensities tend to reduce plant growth, development and yield. This is
because low amount of solar energy restricts the rate of photosynthesis. Below a
minimum intensity, the plant falls below the compensation point. Compensation point is
the metabolic point at which the rates of photosynthesis and respiration are equal so that
leaves do not gain or lose dry matter. Photosynthesis significantly slows down or ceases
while respiration continues. Likewise, excessive light intensity should be avoided.
D. Museum Lighting System
Light intensity is a primary consideration in museums to protect historic artifacts from
damage. 5 to 10 foot-candles (approx. 50 to 100 lux) is currently considered to be the
maximum allowable light level for very sensitive materials, such as prints, drawings,
watercolors, dyed fabrics, manuscripts, and botanical specimens. Up to 15 foot-candles

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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE SURVEY
The survey is a recognized and accepted part of the modern society. It is one of the means
by which society keeps it informed, a way of bringing under central situations of
increasing size and complexity of obtaining perceptive and standard of comparison. A
survey gives an oversight of a field and is thus distinguishing from a sort of study which
consists of a microscopic examination of a turf; it is a map rather than a detailed plan. The
survey must be planned before a start is made.

2.1 BASE PAPERS

1. D. Nagaraju, C. H. Kireet, N. Pradeep Kumar and Ravi Kumar Jatoth, "Performance
Comparison of Signal Conditioning Circuits For Light Intensity Measurement", World
Academics Joumal of Engineering Sciences, PP. 2007 (1-10), Vol. 01, Issue 02, 2014
(ISSN: 2348- 635X).
To accurately measure the light intensity in a given spot, it is best to use a light meter. In
commercial light meters different signal conditioning circuits are used. Selecting a
suitable signal conditioning circuit is an important task for instrumentation engineer. So,
this paper tries to evaluate the performances of different signal conditioning circuits in
terms of linearity, sensitivity and accuracy.
2.

Gina M. Alvino,Gregory S,Archer and Joy A. Mench "Behavioural tim budgets of

broiler chickens reared light intensities",ScienceDirect joumal volume 118,lssues 12,ApriI2009,pp.54-61.
This paper introduces real time remote Light intensity monitoring system using Raspberry
Pi which enables the user to track the lighting system remotely.

3. W.Winchell, " Lighting For Poultry Housing" Agricultural Engineer, Canada

Plan Service.

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In this paper several different lighting programs are being studied to help improve
skeletal development through feed intake. All lighting programs that use more hours
of darkness than the hours of darkness during natural day length require light traps on
fans and air inlets

Chapter -3

HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION

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3.1 LDR
A LDR (Light Dependent Resistor) is variable resistor, the resistance of the LDR is
inversely proportional to the light intensity, it exhibits maximum resistance in the absence
of light and minimum resistance in the presence of light. LDR produces analog output
voltage with respect to incident light, The Raspberry Pi computer does not have a way to
read analog inputs. It is a digital-only computer. Compared to the Arduino, AVR or PIC
microcontrollers that often have 6 or more analog inputs.

Fig 3.1 LDR

3.2 Development Board

Raspberry Pi (shown in Fig 3.2) is a credit-card-sized ARM powered Linux computer
developed in the UK by Raspberry Pi foundation with the intention of stimulating the
teaching of basic computer science in schools. It has five models; Model A has 256Mb
RAM, one USB port and no network connection. Model B has 512Mb RAM, 2 USB ports
and an Ethernet port. Model A+ has specifications very similar to Model A, but replaces
the 26-pin GPIO connector, by a 40-pin connector, a micro SD slot takes the place of a
full-sized SD slot, and power management has been improved so that it's more efficient,
and can support "power hungry" USB devices. Model B+ has specifications very similar to
Model B, but replaces the 26-pin GPIO connector, by a 40-pin connector, a micro SD slot
takes the place of a full-sized SD slot, replaces the 2 USB ports, by 4 USB ports and
power management has been improved so that it's more efficient. It has a Broadcom
BCM2835 system on a chip which includes an ARMI176JZF-S 700 MHz processor, Video
Core IV GPU, and a micro SD card. The GPU is capable of Blu-ray quality playback,

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using H.264 at 40MBits/s. It has a fast 3D core accessed using the supplied OpenGL ES2.0
and Open-VG libraries. The chip specifically provides micro HDMI and 3.5mm A V jack.
Recently launched Raspberry pi2 has identical board Layout and footprint as the Model B+
but It has Quad processor runs at 900MHz and RAM of 1GB. The foundation provides
following operating systems RASPBIAN, PIDORA, OPENELEC, RASPBMC, RISC OS
and also Python as the main programming language, with the support for BBC BASIC, C
and Perl

Fig 3.2 Raspberry Pi Model B+ Board

3.3

ADC

Analog inputs are handy because many sensors are analog outputs, so we need a way to
make the Pi analog-friendly. We can do that by wiring up an external ADC (Analog to
Digital Converter) MCP 3208. The MCP 3208 acts as a bridge between digital and
analog. It is a 12 bit 8 channel Analog to Digital converter. It uses the SPI bus protocol
which is supported by the pi's GPIO header.
We need to enable the SPI interface on the raspberry pi by modifying the configuration
file i.e., raspi-blacklist.conf the following command is used to open the configuration file
sudo nano etcimodeprobe. dlraspi-blacklist. conJ. Add a '#' character in front of the line
spi-bcm2708. Use CTRL-X, then Y, then Return to save the file and exit. Reboot using
following command sudo reboot. In order to read data from the SPI bus in Python we can
install a library called 'pyspidev'. Know ready to use SPI protocol in raspberry pi.
Configure the ADC input registers to select particular channel in the ADC and use bitwise
operators to get desired output from the output registers.

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Fig 3.3 MCP 3208 Analog to Digital Converter

3.3.1 Features of MCP-3208

12-bit resolution

1 LSB max DNL

1 LSB max INL (MCP3204/3208-B)
2 LSB max INL (MCP3204/3208-C)
4 (MCP3204) or 8 (MCP3208) input channels
Analog inputs programmable as single-ended or
pseudo-differential pairs
On-chip sample and hold
SPI serial interface (modes 0,0 and 1,1)
Single supply operation: 2.7V - 5.5V
100 ksps max. sampling rate at VDD = 5V
50 ksps max. sampling rate at VDD = 2.7V

Low power CMOS technology:

- 500 nA typical standby current, 2 A max.
- 400 A max. active current at 5V
Industrial temp range: -40C to +85C
Available in PDIP, SOIC and TSSOP packages
3.3.2 Applications:
Sensor Interface
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Process Control
Data Acquisition
Battery Operated Systems
3.3.3 Pin Description

1. DGND
Digital ground connection to internal digital circuitry.
2. AGND
Analog ground connection to internal analog circuitry.
3. CH0 - CH7
Analog inputs for channels 0 - 7 for the multiplexed inputs. Each pair of channels can be
programmed to be used as two independent channels in single-ended mode or as a single
pseudo-differential input, where one channel is IN+ and one channel is IN.
4. Serial Clock (CLK)
The SPI clock pin is used to initiate a conversion and clock out each bit of the
conversion as it takes
5. Serial Data Input (DIN)
The SPI port serial data input pin is used to load channel configuration data into the
device.
6. Serial Data Output (DOUT)
The SPI serial data output pin is used to shift out the results of the A/D conversion. Data
will always change on the falling edge of each clock as the conversion takes place
7. Chip Select/Shutdown (CS/SHDN)
The CS/SHDN pin is used to initiate communication with the device when pulled low and
will end a conversion and put the device in low power standby when pulled high. The
CS/SHDN pin must be pulled high between conversions.
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3.4

Signal Conditioning Circuit for Light Intensity

Measurement

Here we are using two signaling condition circuits

Signal Condition Circuit Using Instrumentation Amplifier

Signal Condition Circuit Using Low Pass Filter

3.4.1 Signal Condition Circuit Using Instrumentation Amplifier

Resistive sensors such as LDRs, RTDs and strain gages produce small percentage
changes in resistance in response to a change in a physical variable such as light,
temperature or force. One technique for measuring resistance is to force a constant current
through the resistive sensor and measure the voltage output.
An instrumentation amplifier is a type of differential amplifier that has been outfitted with
input buffer amplifiers, which eliminate the need for input impedance matching and thus
make the amplifier particularly suitable for use in measurement and test equipment.
Additional characteristics include very low DC offset, low drift, low noise, very high
open-loop gain, very high common-mode rejection ratio, and very high input
impedances. Instrumentation amplifiers are used where great accuracy and stability of the
circuit both short and long-term are required.

Figure 3.4. Signal Condition Circuit Using Instrumentation Amplifier.

Circuit Description: Signaling condition means manipulating an analog signal in such a
way that it meets the requirement of the next state for further processing. In our paper
change in the resistance of the LDR due to light intensity then output voltage of bridge
also changed. Based on this output of the instrumentation amplifier which is connected to
the bridge circuit, will also amplified and the variation of the voltage will be changed. It
is observed that due to limiting the input voltage the output voltage variation gets linearity
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up to a certain range. Here the instrumentation amplifier is of having a gain of 10. In this
project bridge circuit is very sensitive. So it will get the output voltage based on
the sensitivity of bridge

Fig 3.4.1. Hardware implementation of Signal Conditioning Circuit Using

Instrumentation Amplifier

3.4.2 Signal Condition Circuit Using Low Pass Filter

The circuit diagram as shown in Figure 3.4.2 potential divider network and op-amp filter
stage, whenever light fall on the LDR, resistance of the LDR changes drastically hence
voltage across the pot increases, this voltage has noise due to noise sources like flickering
lights, glare, and pulsating light sources and so on, to eliminate this noise we use the 3rd
order low pass filter.

Figure 3.4.2 Signal Condition Circuit Using Low Pass Filter

3.5 Wi-Fi Dongle with Raspberry Pie

Wi-Fi is a popular wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide
wireless high-speed Internet and network connections. The Wi-Fi Alliance, the
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organization that owns the Wi-Fi registered trademark term specifically defines Wi-Fi as
any "wireless local area network (WLAN) products that are based on the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.11 standards

Fig 3.5 Wi-Fi Dongle with Raspberry Pie

We are using Wi-Fi dongle is shown in Fig.6 for Wi-Fi communication between
Raspberry Pi and clients.The first task is to bum the Rasbian OS into the raspberry pi and
we can configure the device with following command sudo nano letclwpa_
supplicantlwpa_supplicant. Conf then we can see a window as shown in Fig.7.we need to
swap "YOUR_SSID" and "YOUR_PASSWORD" and give name and password of our
Wi-Fi network. Then reboot the raspberry pi using following command sudo reboot. Now
we are ready to use Wi-Fi communication.

CHAPTER 4

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

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4.1 BLOCK DIAGRAM

Fig 4.1 Block Diagram of Proposed System

Complete block diagram is as shown in Fig. 4.1 signal from LDR is given to the signal
conditioning circuit which is responsible to eliminate the noise, output of signal
conditioning circuit given to the one of the analog channel of ADC which converts signal
into digital signal, then the signal given to the GPIO (General Purpose input/output) of the
Raspberry Pi.

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4.2 Raspberry Pi as a Webserver

The Raspberry Pi is a good choice for a web server that will not receive too much
traffic, such as a testing server, or small intranet, as it doesn't have overheating problem.
Apache is a web server application that we can install in the raspberry pi which allows to
serve web pages. Use the following command to install Apache2, sudo apt-get install
apche2 -yo Apache can serve HTML files over HTTP, and additional modules can serve
dynamic web pages using scripting languages such as PHP.

Fig 4.2 Serve and client Communication

We can store Acquire in the database, developed web application stored in the
server. Client can access the system with IP address through computer or Smartphone or
Tablet or any other internet enabled device.

Fig 4.2.1 System IP address

CHAPTER 5

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EVALUATION
The purpose of evaluation is to evaluate the performance of proposed system

Fig 5.1 Light Meter

Fig 5.2 Sample data for Week (15/12/2014 to 21/12/2014)

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Fig 5.3 Week Report from 15/12/2014 to 21/12/2014

Fig. 5.1 shows the light meter which shows instantaneous light intensity If we observe
the Fig.5.2 in between 11 to 15 hours light intensity recorded less than the
average light intensity (500 LUX). It is also showing maximum light intensity, minimum
light intensity and average light intensity with date, time and location.Fig.5.3 shows week
report (15112/2014 to 2111212014), it helps data analyst to understand average light
intensity of each day. If we observe the Fig.5.3 in between 15/12/2014 to 1711212014 the
light intensity recorded less than the average light intensity (500 LUX) and there is
sudden change in light intensity on the day 1811212014 where it is recoded more than the
average light intensity. It is also showing maximum light intensity, minimum light
intensity and average light intensity with date and location

Fig.5.4 shows performance of the system with (i.e. Week2) and without (i.e. Week 1)
controlling

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Fig.5.4 performance Comparison

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CHAPTER 6

APPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION

6.1 Applications
A. Lighting for Poultry Housing
Light intensity is an important management factor for breeder type poultry. There is
evidence suggesting minimum threshold intensity is needed to obtain optimal
reproduction performance. Light levels (intensity or illuminance) and the duration of light
(photo period) are important factors in poultry production.
Light intensity is affected by many variables: lamp type (i.e., incandescent versus
fluorescent, versus high pressure sodium, versus metal halide, versus low pressure
sodium, etc.); reflectance of the floor, walls, ceiling; height of the lamp fixture above the
working plane; dirty conditions, and maintenance schedule
B. Lighting for Commercial Green House
In commercial greenhouses, several strategies can be used to help properly manage light
levels throughout the day and seasonally. Some of the primary reasons why greenhouses
manipulate light levels include temperature and irrigation management, photoperiod
control, minimizing crop stress, and optimizing photosynthesis i.e. The amount of light
received by a plant is an important factor, because plants' growth may suffer if they do not
receive sufficient light. They may lose their characteristic shape and grow thin, leggy
stems. New leaves may also be smaller and turn yellow. Some plants may lose their color
or turn dark green. Plants exposed to excessive light, on the other hand, may not flower
properly or may turn pale green. Different species of plants require different amounts of
light So; light intensity is an important variable to measure in every greenhouse. This is
especially true for growers where the majority of crops are propagated from December to
March and naturally occurring outdoor light intensity values are high. Furthermore, these
values can be 40 to 70 percent lower because of shading from greenhouse glazing,
structures, and hanging baskets. These obstructions can result in an average light intensity
as low as possible
C. Traffic Lighting System
To ensure safety on the road, traffic lights need to be clearly visible for road users. The
light intensity has to be sufficient under every (weather) condition, which set in legal
standards. Over the course of time, the luminous intensity of traffic lights slowly
decreases. Possible reasons are pollution of lenses or reflectors, aging of the light source
or individual LED failure. Remote monitoring enables the road authority to carry
out timely services, in such a way that traffic lights keep satisfying the statutory rules for
optimal traffic safety.

D. TV Cameras

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Most TV cameras need at least 1000 lux (about 90 FC) of light to produce good quality
video in the middle of the lens f-stop range, many can produce acceptable pictures under
a few foot-candles of light. When color was first introduced in TV studios, 300 footcandles (more than 3,000 lux) of light were required. As newer color cameras were
introduced, this level kept dropping.
Today, many on-location shoots are done with as little as 30 foot-candles (about 300 lux)
of light. The latest generation of professional video cameras can produce good quality
video under less than one foot-candle (less than 10 lux) Note in this scene that without
selective focus the woman and the goat would almost disappear into the background
clutter. Where: foot-candle (FC) equals about 10.74 lux Ratio of open area to focal length
of lens is called an F stop (2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32 ....)

Fig 6.1 scene without selective focus

E. Light required for Reading in bed room
It's convenient to have an extra light in a room specifically for reading. Reading requires
more light than other activities. By having a reading light, you can keep the rest of the
light in your room muted while still having enough in one area to read comfortably

Fig 6.2 A woman reading in bed room

CONCLUSIONS
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The Facility manger will have skill, training and experience but lagging with lack of
information to take action immediately. In the paper, we have proposed and developed
cloud based light intensity monitoring system. This helps to Facility manger to take
necessary action at right time, with proper controlling with can achieve desired results. To
evaluate the system, we have considered laboratory as an example but it can be used at
various applications like traffic light monitoring, poultry lighting and museum lighting
etc. to avoid damage

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[2] W.Winchell, " Lighting For Poultry Housing" Agricultural Engineer, Canada Plan
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[3] Charles Kitchin and Lew Counts, A Designers Guide to Instrumentation Amplifiers.
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[6] Li Zhongshen "Design and Analysis of Improved Butterworth Low Pass Filter, 8th
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[13] Raspberry pi community, ''http://www.raspberrypi.org/products/modelb-plusf'.
[14] Microchip Data sheet,"MCP 3204/3208 2.7V 4 channell8 channel 12 Bit ND
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[15] W.Winchell, " Lighting For Poultry Housing" Agricultural Engineer, Canada Plan
Service.
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[16] Gina M. Alvino,Gregory S,Archer and Joy A. Mench "Behavioural time budgets of
broiler chickens reared light intensities",ScienceDirect joumal volume 118,lssues 12,ApriI2009,pp.54-61.
[17] R.Bryan Jones,Teresa K.Hagedom and Daniel G.Satterlee,"Adoption of immobility
by shackled broiler chickens:effects of light intnensity and diverse hooding devices",
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[18] Mickie McCormick,"Measuring Light Levels for Works on Display",The Exhibition
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