Solar Power Remote Monitoring and

ControllingUsing Arduino, LabVIEW and Web

browser
Haider-e-Karar l

Aziz Altaf Khuwaja

Abdul Sattar

Department of Electrical
Engineering Sukkur IBA
Sindh, Pakistan
Email: hyder.noonari@iba-suk.edu.pk

Department of Electrical
Engineering Sukkur IBA
Sindh, Pakistan
Email: aziz.khuwaja@iba-suk.edu.pk

Department of Electronics
Engineering QUEST Larkana
Sindh, Pakistan
Email: abdul.sattar@quest.edu.pk

AbstractThis paper proposes an effective and efficient

graphical user interface (GUI) to real time control and monitor
the DC power generated by solar panels and DC power consumed
by load locally and remotely. There are two GUIs provided server
and client. Server computer needs to be installed near to solar
panels for monitoring and controlling locally while client GUI
can be accessed by using a web browser from any part of world,
authorize person can monitor and control all operations. Server
and client GUI are designed by using LabVIEW and LabVIEW
UI builder while hardware is developed with Arduino Uno, current and voltage sensors, relays and charge controller. Monitoring
interface uses real time measurement results to prepare the power,
current and voltage graphs, it is also possible to record and
reach database file to analyze history of renewable energy source
(RES) system. This will also help to increase performance of the
existing solar system also other alternative resources of energy.
In this system monitoring interface contains power production
and consumption, voltage and current graphs and meters on
a GUI. Controlling feature includes turn on/shutdown of solar
system, increase or decrease energy consumption, generation and
switching to other available system.
KeywordsSolar Power, LabVIEW, UI Builder, Remote Monitoring, Arduino.

I.

I NTRODUCTION

Over the last decade, remote monitoring and controlling

gained popularity in industrial and academic community also
generating power using solar cells has been developed rapidly
and in parallel of solar panel systems becoming widespread
in power generation systems in all around the world [1]. Data
acquisition using labVIEW Digital Acquisition (DAQ) cards
for remote purposes were already done by many researchers
but these cards are expensive [2]. Using Arduino boards for
data acquisition is considered as one of cost effective solution
and easily available. In this paper our aim is to monitor and
control DC power produced by solar panels and consumed by
load through computers locally and remotely using simple and
cost effective hardware like Arduino board.
II.

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

A. Software Implementation
Software development is based on NI LabVIEW (short
for Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench)
and User Interface (UI) Builder. LabVIEW is a systemdesign platform and development environment for a visual
programming language from National Instruments. LabVIEW

978-1-4673-6813-1/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

is a software development environment that contains numerous

components, several of which are required for any type of test,
control application or measurement [3]. LabVIEW programs
are called virtual instruments (VIs). The front panel is created
using controls and indicators to make a graphical interface. The
back panel, contains the graphical source code. In some ways,
the block diagram resembles a flowchart [6]. The LabVIEW
Interface for Arduino Toolkit helps you easily interface with
the Arduino board using LabVIEW . With this toolkit and
LabVIEW, you can control or acquire data from the Arduino
board. Once the information is in LabVIEW, it analyze using
the hundreds of built in LabVIEW develop algorithms, libraries
to control the Arduino platform, and present your findings on
a polished UI.

B. Server and Client Graphical User Interface or Programs

LabVIEW provides easy tools to make a simple and
understandable interfaces. There are two types of interfaces or
programs are designed, one is server program; that is main program and other is client program. Server interface is main part
of project and developed using LabVIEW software. The whole
system hardware (Arduino, sensors and relays) is interfaced
with server program to monitor and control the energy production of solar system and consumed by load locally. While
client program does not need any additional software simply
by using browser system performance can be monitored and
controlled remotely. Internet and a fixed Internet protocol (IP)
of server computer (Where main server program is running)
is needed to monitor and control power production of solar
panels. Solar system on web can be accessed from any device
that support The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and
controlled by authorized person. By putting Uniform Resource
Locator (URL) (test URL http://smartsolarsystem.net84.net/ )
and with a valid username and password system performance
is monitored and controlled. Fig. 1 shows the graphical interface of server. This interface contains multiple tabs for
different features. Home tab contains, power generation and
consumption meters and graphs, voltage output meter and
graph, power generation by solar panels meter and graph and
solar system condition indicators. For Controlling emergency
shutdown button is placed.

C. Real Time Web-based Communication with a LabVIEW

Application
A web client can exchange data with a remote LabVIEW
stand-alone application over a network through LabVIEW Web
services. A web service consists of VIs and other files running
on a server that respond to HTTP requests from clients. Web
services are useful in the following situations:

Users can invoke the Web service VIs with any HTTPcapable web client, including a standard web browser,
to exchange data using a URL and standard HTTP
methods such as POST.

Users can remotely monitor and control embedded

applications using custom thin clients.[3]

Fig. 1. Server Graphical Interface for Data Acquisition

Electricity control Tab is an extra feature of automatic load
shedding while recorded wave files tab is for viewing recorded
waveform files such as if someone is interested to see what
was power production of solar system from 10.00 AM to 12:00
PM.
LabVIEW Client Interface : LabVIEW Web UI Builder
provides the facility to develop web-based, lightweight thin
client applications through graphical programming. These
applications enable users to remotely monitor and control LabVIEW-based measurement and automation systems
through a web browser on a graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
Fig. 2 shows the combination of web services and browserbased clients via Internet [8].

Server program responds to HTTP request coming from

client interface. Through web service client sends data to
control and receive real time voltage, current and power data
and displays it on GUI. To use a web service, a client sends
a request to the remote system hosting the service (server
program), which then processes the request and sends back
a response (XML data). The client can choose to display the
raw XML data, but it is more common to parse the data and
display it to the user as part of a graphical user interface (GUI)
as shown below in Fig. 4 and Fig. 3 [9]. One of important
contribution in this paper is using Arduino with LabVIEW
for real time monitoring and controlling at remote location.
LabVIEW Arduino program (server program) will not work
with web service because of continuous request from client
program it will hang due to while loop for Arduino coding
and will not show any results on client interface . In order to
overcome this problem global variables are declared in server
program. All data coming from sensors are written in variables
as well as displayed on graphical interface of server. Another
VI is required where global variables are called from main
program configure this VI to make up the web service.

Fig. 2. Combination of Web Services and Browser-based

Clients
LabVIEW UI provides easy tools like LabVIEW software to develop different interfaces for real time monitoring
and controlling. Fig. 3 shows the client interface with valid
username and password it can be accessed from any part of
the world to real time monitor and control. It contains same
features as server program. It is copy of server at remote site.

Fig. 4. Web services with the user interface [8]

D. Hardware

Fig. 3. Client Interface for remote site

LabVIEW provides facilities to communicate with hardware such as data acquisition, motion control devices and
vision. One of simple and cheap hardware that can be used
with LabVIEW is Arduino board. Arduino is cheapest hardware that is available nowadays. Beside Arduino NI builds
hardware that can be used with LabVIEW but these hardware

are quite expensive [3]. In this research, hardware consists of

solar panel, Arduino board, current sensors and voltage sensors
as shown in Fig. 5. Voltage generated by solar panel is first
passed through relay for emergency shutdown or switching
from solar energy to other source of energy and then to voltage
and current sensors and finally to Arduino which is interfaced
with computer for efficient monitoring and control. With help
of LabVIEW web service and UI builder same data can be
seen from remote location.

a copper conduction path located near the surface of the die.

Applied current flowing through this copper conduction path
generates a magnetic field which is sensed by the integrated
Hall IC and converted into a proportional voltage. A pair
of current sensor is deployed each power generation by PV
module and power utilization by load [5].
4. Relay
5V single pole double throw relay is used for switching,
through which solar system can be shut down or switched
to other available energy source. Fig. 6 shows connection of
current and voltage sensors and relay with Arduino Mega 2560
board. Voltage is measured using voltage divider circuit for
this purpose two resistors are placed in series so that they
can divide voltage with each other. Charge controlled is used
to properly charge the battery and provide the voltage to the
load. Fig. 6 shows connection of current and voltage sensor
and relay with Arduino Mega 2560 board.

Fig. 5. Flow Diagram of Whole System

1. Arduino Mega 2560
The Arduino Mega 2560 is a microcontroller board based
on the ATmega2560. It has 16 analog inputs, 54 digital
input/output pins (of which 15 can be used as PWM outputs), 4
Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UARTs), a 16
MHz crystal oscillator [49]. The ATmega2560 has 256 KB of
flash memory for storing code (of which 8 KB is used for the
bootloader), 8 KB of Static Random Access Memory (SRAM)
and 4 KB of Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only
Memory (EEPROM) (which can be read and written with the
EEPROM library) [10]. Other Arduino boards like UNO can
be used depending upon number of inputs needed.

Fig. 6. Circuit Diagram of System

The hardware of the system is shown in Fig. 7 and Fig
8. All sensors and relay are connected to LabVIEW server
program through Arduino board. All real time data is sent to
computer to real time monitor and control DC power. Data
coming from voltage and sensors are then multiplied by using
equation 1 to find the power.
P =V I

(1)

2. Solar Panel
Solar panels are devices that convert light into electricity. A
solar panel is a packaged, connected assembly of photovoltaic
cells. Several types of solar cells available in the market are:

Mono-crystalline silicon (mono-silicon or single silicon)

Polycrystalline silicon (multi-crystalline, multi-silicon,

ribbon) [11].

We used 50W (18V and 2.5A) polycrystalline solar panel for

our experiment.
3. Current sensor
The Allegro ACS712 current sensor provides cost effective
and accurate solutions for DC current sensing. ACS712 consists of a precise, low-offset, linear Hall sensor circuit with

Fig. 7. complete prototype of proposed system

[8]

National Instruments, LabVIEW Web UI Builder Overview,

www.ni.com.
[9] Prashant Kumar Tripathi, Jidhu Mohan M, K V Gangadharan,Design
and Implementation of Web based Remote Laboratory forEngineering
Education, International Journal of Engineering and Technology Volume
2 No. 2, February, 2012.
[10] Official Arduino site, http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/Introduction, Last accessed on 02.2.2015.
[11] Ryan Mayfield,Photovoltaic Design Installation For Dummies,
Chapter-6, PV Modules: From Sand to Electricity.

Fig. 8. complete prototype of proposed system

III.

CONCLUSION

LabVIEW provides easy tools to design any type of graphical interface that is easy understandable for everyone. The NI
LabVIEW Interface for Arduino Toolkit enables to use low
cost and effective hardware like Arduino with LabVIEW thus
use of expensive DAQs has been avoided . This paper discussed
efficient method of controlling and monitoring solar panel
power from remote areas using Arduino, NI LabVIEW and
Web browser. GUI is designed to provide interactive graphical
interface to server as well as for user for monitoring generation
and consumption of power. Implementation of this proposed
prototype will benefit in terms of protection, operation, monitoring and maintenance of solar systems.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Head of Department
Electrical Engineering Dr Madad Ali Shah for his contineous
support.
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