A Prototype Home-Based Environmental Monitoring System

Abstract

An important step towards reducing humankind's reliance on unsustainable energy is by improving energy efficiency in a home or building. One solution to energy-intensive homes is to take environmental measurements in-house that can alert the owner of what rooms and conditions have high-energy waste (e.g., unnecessary airconditioning or lighting). This paper describes the development and performance of a low-cost, easy-to-use and easy-tomaintain wireless sensor network suited for home environmental monitoring. Low-cost and ease-of-use are achieved through a single open-source software element developed for use on a home computer and a low-cost sensor node element that can be simply placed and turned on. Ease-of-maintenance is achieved by prolonging the sensor's battery life and minimising user interaction. Data is retrieved from the sensor and aggregated to central location automatically when the home PC/sink node is turned on. There is no further interaction is required by the user beyond initialising the application.

Semantic IoT: Intelligent Water Management for Efficient Urban Outdoor Water Conservation

“…If that consumer were alerted or the water flow stopped when an area of lawn has had sufficient water based on a more intelligent monitoring system, outdoor water use efficiency could be maximized. There has been much work in creating smarter homes via internal Internet of Things (IoT) sensor networks for efficient power consumption [5][6][7]. Semantic technologies (i.e., linked data) combined with IoT could also be applied to better manage water usage in the garden.…”