A Smart ZIGBEE Based Wireless Sensor Meter

System
Christos Tatsiopoulos

Aphrodite Ktena

Artificial Intelligence Research Center

University of Patras
GR-26500, Rio, GREECE
ctatsio@gmail.com

Department of Electrical Engineering

TEI of Chalkida
GR 34400, Psachna, Evia, GREECE
aktena@teihal.gr

AbstractA temperature, humidity and light meter has been

designed and implemented using open standards technology and
commercial components in order to monitor environmental
indoor and outdoor conditions. At the heart of the smart meter
lies a microprocessor processor using the ZigBee protocol to
communicate the data transmitted by commercial wireless
sensors. A prototype has been built and preliminary
measurements have been taken. The potential of this
configuration is being discussed.
Keywords - smart multimeter;
environmental monitoring

I.

wireless

sensor

meter;

INTRODUCTION

Over the last decade, wireless sensors have been attracting

the interest of both the academy and market world because of
the capabilities offered by the wireless over the conventional
wired sensors. Wireless sensing systems are simpler to
implement and install since no wiring is needed which saves
effort and money. They can be networked to yield flexible and
scalable systems allowing for better monitoring of the
environment around us. Research efforts are directed towards
the fundamental physics involved in transmitting signals,
exploring application areas for wireless sensors, developing
efficient means for transmitting messages through networks,
developing standards or exploring security issues involved.
The technology that has made all this possible is wireless
communication. Communication protocols are a major issue in
wireless sensing. The lack of standardization results in sensor
interface and interoperability problems that only promise to
get worse as wireless sensing engulfs more and more
applications. Therefore, a lot of effort has been directed in
establishing standards that use popular protocols in wireless
sensing such as 802.11 (WiFi), 802.15.1 (Bluetooth), and
802.15.4 (ZigBee). Such standards are IEEE 1451.0 and IEEE
1451.1 that can be applied to access wireless sensors via a
network or the worldwide web [1]. Bluetooth is the technology
of choice for voice and cable replacement applications with
3Mbps rate. WiFi technology is mainly used in PC and
broadband internet connection for video stream with 300Mbps
rate. The low-rate data communication standard Zigbee with

250Kbps rate and ultra-low power consumption is commonly

applied to sensor networks.
The implementation and customization of wireless sensor
devices is also facilitated by the abundance of low cost, small
size, low-power consumption, high sensitivity and accuracy
CMOS ICs that make up sensors nowadays. Research efforts in
this domain are focused on calibration and reliability issues [2].
In the commercial applications domain, developing smart
building and environment monitoring systems based on
wireless sensor networks as well as smart metering devices for
power consumption monitoring are attracting a lot of interest.
Wireless sensor monitoring in buildings can enhance the
quality of indoor environment, decrease energy costs, alert
building managers or users of potential problems or failures,
track the history of environment parameters being monitored,
provide the basis for automated control.
In the energy metering domain, smart meters allow users to
make choices on how much energy they use, account for
microgeneration, facilitate forecasting on the energy demand
during the day. In the near future, conventional meters will be
replaced by smart meters with two-way communication
systems that display accurate real-time information on energy
use in the home to the consumer and back to the energy
supplier.
Our goal has been to first develop a wireless sensing device
used for the monitoring of humidity, light and temperature
inside a building or in an outdoors space, such as a winery,
where it is crucial that conditions are kept under control. The
same platform and design, using the same backoffice, can be
applied to a smart energy meter monitoring the energy
consumption in a building in order to generate the energy
profile of the building as a function of the time of the day and
the type of load.
The design proposed in this paper uses open standard
technologies and is fine tuned to ones needs. In the following
section, the device along with its GUI and backoffice are
presented and described. Preliminary results and their
discussion are presented in Sections III and IV.

978-1-4244-4530-1/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE

II.

DESCRIPTION OF THE APPARATUS

In this section we present the schematics of the various

components and photos of the actual apparatus that has been
used and discuss the function and operation of each component
separately as well as of the whole device.
The system is comprised of two main hardware modules
that communicate between them wirelessly. The first piece is a
device that has 3 types of sensors, for light, humidity and
temperature. These sensors are connected to an ARDUINO
Processor based development kit, so that the output signals of
the sensors can be processed locally, up to a certain point.
Next, the device integrates a communication module that is
based on the XBEE communication protocol.
On the other side of the network, there exists a similar
device, which connects to a laptop that collects via a USB port
the data coming from the second device. This device is also an
ARDUINO based device that has also an XBEE protocol shell
on top of it. The two devices implement a Wireless Sensor
Network (WSN), which is of open network addressing and can
accept a multitude of modules that have sensors on demand. In
case more devices are added to the network, the user has none
to implement, since there is embedded intelligence for
autorouting of packets. Both devices are self-powered. The
system is programmed to loop through the following cycle: i)
acquires values from the sensors, ii) operates upon and
processes these values iii) transmits the results iv) sleeps for a
certain time interval.
For the specific application, the implementation of the
SQUIDBEE platform has been adopted, which is a widely
accepted hardware implementation, especially in the
environmental field and academic applications since it provides
an easy learning curve of the development environment.
SQUIDBEE integrates both the ARDUINO and the XBEE
shield and comes as an integrated box for both the SENSOR
and GATEWAY motes. The board inside SQUIDBEE has
been developed by the ARDUINO team. The communications
module which lets the node transmit through a ZIGBEE
module has been developed by Libelium. Both components are
open hardware and they have a really strong community
support as mentioned above. Additionally, at a later phase, if
necessary, the device can be redesigned so as to be integrated
into an existing 802.11/x wireless network through a specific
device called MESH router. This way, the data is collected
using the ZIGBEE protocol and transmitted to the mesh
network using the WiFi technology (802.11).
A.

The microprocessor
In the heart of the device lies an ARDUINO
microprocessor which is an open-source electronics
prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware
and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and
anyone interested in creating interactive objects or
environments. It can sense the environment by receiving input
from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by
controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The

microcontroller on the board is programmed using the

ARDUINO programming language. ARDUINO projects can
be stand-alone or they can communicate with software running
on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP). The boards
may be assembled by the user or purchased preassembled. The
software can be downloaded for free. The hardware reference
designs (CAD files) are available under an open-source license
and it is free to adapt them to one's needs. The architecture of
the ARDUINO board is presented in Figs. 1-2.
The ARDUINO programming environment uses a set of
commands similar to the C/C++ syntax and supports control
structures, all types of logical and arithmetic operators and a
variety of data types and variables, useful for micro processor
applications.

Figure 1. The ARDUINO board schematic

Figure 2. The actual ARDUINO board

B. Data acquisition and transmission

The wireless communication module is based on the
802.15.4 (ZigBee) protocol and has the following
specifications [7]:
Power output 1 mW (up to 100 m) for ZigBee, 100 mW
(up to 1000 m) for ZigBee pro, 250 kbps RF data rate,
operating frequency at 2.4 GHz, operating voltages 5 - 12V;
supports the peer-to-peer, point-to-point, point-to-multipoint
and mesh networking topologies; has a channel capacity of 16

direct sequence channels (software selectable), and 65,000

network addresses available for each channel.
Three sensors for measuring temperature, humidity and
light have been used in the device. The temperature sensor used
is of the National Semiconductors LM35 precision centigrade
temperature family sensors designed for indoors use. The
LM35 sensor is an IC silicon temperature sensor. Because it is
an IC it is an ideal solution for microprocessor-based systems.
LM35 is a linear Celsius (Centigrade) temperature sensor. It
can be directly calibrated in Celsius with a linearity of +10.0
mV/C scale factor, 0.5C accuracy (at +25C), rated for the
full 55 to +150C range, typical if IC silicon sensors. They
are suitable for remote applications and low cost due to waferlevel trimming. They operate from 4 to 30 Volts, with less than
60 A current drain, low self-heating of 0.08C in still air,
with typical nonlinearity only 14C, low impedance output
and 0.1W for 1A load [4].
The humidity sensor used is a Sencera 808H5V5 humidity
transmitter [5]. It is a low cost capacitor polymer sensor whose
capacitance increases in value as water molecules are absorbed
into its active polymer dielectric. It consists of a base plate and
a water permeable platinum top plate and yields a linear
voltage output response with respect to relative humidity. It has
high accuracy, long term stability, and can work even in bad
environments. Some indicative applications where it can be
used are meteorological instrumentation, industrial process
control, relative humidity (RH) measurement, etc. The RH
range it measures is 0-100%RH, with signal output 0.8~3.9V at
25C. The accuracy of the sensor is 4%RH at 25C,
30~80%RH, with a 5VDC power supply. The operating
environment is -40~+85C.
C. Application Architecture
In Fig.3 the major functionalities of the application are
depicted. The main components are:
- The Graphical User Interface (big screen in the middle of
the diagram). The USER GUI has on the main menu all the file
and setup operations parameters. It also provides the three real
time diagrams for temperature, humidity and light values. On
the right hand side, the current temperature, humidity and light
real-time measurements are displayed. They are weighted so as
to provide a most accurate number based view of these
conditions on the field.
- The input components. On the left hand side of the
diagram, the input components connected to the device are
displayed. Currently, the application supports a GATEWAY
mote connected to the PC that runs the main application. This
transmits data via the USB port of the PC. The GATEWAY
can support a large number of SENSOR motes (up to 65535
per GATEWAY), depending on the field that has to be covered
and so on. Additional items are handled in an automated
manner by the system, as required. Data can be displayed on
the system either for selected nodes or for the complete system.
D. The Backoffice components
Apart from the GUI, on which the real time data is
displayed, data is also formatted in XML format and stored in

the database of the system. The backoffice operations have not

yet been implemented but will be designed so that the database
supplies the historical data to the WEB Server and from there
they are distributed via Internet to any browser, for remote
monitoring of the sensing parameters. The data stored in the
data base will also be used to provide customized alerts
presented in the graphical user interface and sent via email and
SMS to the registered and authorized user.
III.

RESULTS

The data from the sensor network is streaming into the

application from the USB connection via the Windows
HYPERTERMINAL program in the following format:
@: Start of String, NO : Station ID (for multiple SENSOR
motes), |: Delimiter, NO: Measurements ID, |: Delimiter,
Data0 value: A value coming from sensor 0, |: Delimiter,
Data1 value: A value coming from sensor 1, etc, #: End of
String
For example '@4|12|data0-148|data1-350|data2-40#' is a
valid transmitted string that is captured by the system to be
analyzed further. The start (@) and end (#) characters are
needed in order to identify broken transmitted data strings.
Unless both control characters are received, a transmitted string
is ignored so that they do not affect the statistical history
model created by the respective backoffice functionality and
therefore the alerting module.
The raw data transmitted are numbers that are not
meaningful as light, temperature and humidity measurements
and they need to be adjusted using a calibration procedure.
Measurements of light, temperature and humidity have been
performed using respective independent meters as standards.
Next error analysis has been performed on the measurements to
generate a fitting curve and identify possible outliers.
The system has been tested for its performance in a variety
of environments such as typical indoor conditions, in the
refrigerator, under an air-conditioning unit, on a balcony et. al.
The meter was able to adjust in each environment as long as its
sensors were recalibrated each time.
IV.

DISCUSSION

The wireless meter presented has been implemented in

order to test the efficiency and applicability of the design. The
tests run so far have been used to calibrate the instrument and
determine its range of operation. The data processing carried
out has been focused mainly in inputting the transmitted data in
such a way that they will allow for easy manipulation and
processing. The device has functioned as expected so far but
several tests are still needed in order to determine the system's
limitations and capabilities. An important series of tests still
pending concerns deciding on the scheme used for its power
consumption optimization, e.g. sleep time intervals during
which data is collected but not transmitted.
The wireless meter is an easy to implement and scalable
device that can accept sensors as needed without modifications

to the design. Its under development GUI allows for

monitoring and control of the parameters being measured.
The WEB server will be allowed to be connected with an
add-on voice portal so that all messaging services are
announced by voice, either as live stream or as recorded
messages that can be reviewed later. Such messages will
include metering, alerting and propositions for optimal
conditions. This will be the first step before adding actuation
features on the board as well.
Since the software platform used is easily adjustable to new
sensors, the next step is to add a PH meter to the device in
order to implement a meter that fully monitors the conditions in
a winery and other agricultural applications involving plant
growing or animal herding. The ultimate goal is to use this
design in order to develop an application for performing smart
metering and monitoring for energy measurements.
V.

CONCLUSION

The wireless metering device described is flexible and

scalable allowing for several types of motes as input devices.
Using typical in their category components, such as an Arduino
processor and open standard technology, such as the ZigBee
family products, it ensures interoperability and easy to get
service and maintenance. Its user friendly GUI is designed so
as to allow the non-specialized user the monitoring of the

quantities being measured in real time and the via Internet

remote control while the database where past data is being
logged allows for the generation of profiles, forecasting and
issuing of reports, warnings and tips depending on the
applications. Further work is needed to develop the GUI
capabilities and incorporate functionalities that will allow for
control as well as monitoring.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]

[4]

[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]

http://www.bfrl.nist.gov/WirelessSensor/#Smart_Sensors
David J. Nagel, Microsensor clusters, Microelectronics Journal 33, 107119, (2002)
Peter Wotton, Providing reliable sensing and control using ZigBee
wireless networks, Section Sensing and Security, July 2006, RFdesign
magazine. (also http://www.rfdrsign.com)
LM35 Temperatutre Sensor Technical Datasheet, National
Semiconductors, 2006; and National Seminconductors Temperature
Sensor Handbook
808H5V5 humidity transmitter, Technical Datasheet, Sencera Co., Ltd.
XBEE / XBEE Pro OEM RF Product Manual, MaxStream, 2006
http://www.ARDUINO.cc
http://www.squidbee.es

Figure 3. The application architecture with the Graphical User Interface and the input components and the backoffice components