Abstract

The aim of this project is to create an online weather system which enables a user to check real-time weather parameters of a place anytime and anywhere with just a few buttons click. In this project, a weather station will be built to collect weather parameters. Data collected will then store into Google Cloud and analysis of weather will be done. A mobile app or web will be developed to display the real-time weather conditions and users will receive notification as a reminder to get themselves prepared for their plans.

Project Introduction

Weather condition plays an important role in our daily life as weather and climate are the most ubiquitous factors for home and environment planning. Moreover, the tremendous development of Internet nowadays made possible to monitor weather conditions and collect the respective data in-situ. All the objects, sensors and devices can be linked through the Internet to share and analyze the data collected at various locations. The IoT can be much more extensive in predicting and knowing the weather conditions in particular place by connecting this weather station to the Internet.

The climate of Malaysia is so capricious that hard to predict nowadays. As people grow into a developed country with advanced technology to help humanity and bring convenience to the society, it is now the time for the weather broadcasting to be implemented into the mobile phone instead of keep on checking through only television or radio. However, with the mobile weather checking syste, we have in this era still often we see people rushing for schedule under the rain without umbrella; laundries are still showering by rain; home planted plants are wilted due to the hot and dry weather.

Therefore, the objective of this project is to create an online weather system which enables the user to check real-time weather parameters of a place anytime and anywhere with just a few buttons click. On top of that, people will receive real-time notification or reminder to get themselves prepared for their plans in the current weather.

Figure 1: Overall flow of project

Figure 2: Project architecture

Favoriot platform is chosen because it is a new cloud-based platform designed for IoT which supports the integration, collection, and storage of data from several devices into the internet. It has a scalable big data storage. It also helps developers in building vertical applications to display data in many forms. Favoriot platform is suitable to be used in this project that needs several functions provided in this platform in order to obtain desired results.

Design Methodology

There are three phases to achieve the stated objectives above:

Weather station design and prototype development

These weather parameters are measured using Sparkfun Weather Shield sensor and the Raspberry Pi 3 with built-in Wi-Fi is used to capture all the data from the weather sensor. The measurements taken include temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, light intensity, wind speed and direction, and rain precipitation.

Transferring data to initial state cloud platform

Raspberry Pi 3 will stream the data directly to the cloud. Cloud platform that are suggested to be used in this project are Favoriot because it fully managed data, supports monitoring, logging, and diagnostics, data analysis and helps developers in building vertical applications.

Application of Internet of Things (IoT)

A stream of weather parameters/information can be displayed in a professional graphical fashion which can be accessed from mobile phone or web. Favoriot also allows the development of next generation of applications of the web that is reliable, fast and engaging. Real-time notification will then be sent to the user as a reminder.

Preliminary Result

The SparkFun Weather Shield with built-in Si7021 humidity/temperature sensor, MPL3115A2 barometric pressure sensor, and the ALS-PT19 light sensor was connected to Raspberry Pi 3 as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: The hardware of this project

The weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, and pressure are taken from the weather shield and loaded into Raspberry Pi 3. The weather parameters were displayed at the Lx terminal of the VNC viewer as shown in Figure 5. Data collected from the sensors were successfully streamed into Favoriot and shown in the dashboard as shown in Figure 6. However, the data streamed into the Favoriot is not tally with the data collected from the sensors as for now.  In addition, the current weather conditions are updated to multiple social media every hour to notify the user as shown in Figure 7. The number of update post can be determined by modifying the python code.

Figure 5: The weather parameters displayed in Lx terminal of Raspberry Pi 3

Figure 6: Data is being streamed and displayed in Favoriot

Figure 7: Twitter post showing the current weather condition

Expected Result

The expected results toward the end of this project are described as below:

Prototype

A prototype of weather station by using Raspberry Pi 3 and Sparkfun Weather Shield sensor is designed and developed for climatology monitoring. The weather station is able to be interfaced to the Favoriot cloud platform. Weather parameters are able to be collected and saved in the cloud.

Application

Weather parameters can be analyzed online with graphical presentation. People can access the weather-related information via mobile phone or web easily. Notifications will be sent to the users too as a reminder.

Figure 8: Expected results of Favoriot data analytics for weather parameters in (a) line chart and (b) column chart.

Figure 9: Expected results of weather app development using Favoriot platform

[Note: This project is being done by UTHM, our FAVORIOT’s University collaborator. Article was written by Pui Yan Muck]

You can check out the whole LIST of IOT PROJECTS by our University Collaborators.

As India is making a fast progress directed towards a digital world, making headlines in initiatives like the smart city or a dedicated center of excellence for the Internet of Things.

The country is evidently stepping towards a better-connected world. Indian information technology (IT) services companies now own about two-fifth of the global Internet of Things (IoT) market. In all, about 43 % or $1.5 billion of the global $3.5 Billion market, says a report by research and strategy consultancy Zinnov Zones.

The share in Western Europe and North America is 27 % and 23 %, respectively. And the report has listed TCS, Wipro, Infosys, HCL, Tech Mahindra, Persistent, Genpact and L&T Technologies among the global leading innovators and market leaders in IoT.

As the Internet of Things is hitting the products and services side of it, creating job opportunities like never before. Statistics below are taken from “IoT India Job Study 2017”

IoT India Job Study 2017 Report

IoT Jobs by Cities:

• In terms of cities, Bengaluru accounts for around 51% of IoT jobs in India.
• Chennai comes a distant second contributing 15% IoT jobs in India.
• Approximately 12% of IoT jobs are from Delhi/NCR.

IoT Jobs by Industry:

• Telecom sector continues to be the biggest influencer in IoT job market. 37% of all jobs posted on IoT were from the Telecom sector.
• 14% of IoT jobs were in Engineering/ Industrial product/ Utilities sector.
• Semiconductors / Electronics sector contributes 13% of all IoT jobs.

Experience Requirement by IoT jobs:

• Around 32% of IoT requirements are looking for candidates with less than 5 years experience.
• Only 3% IoT jobs are for freshers.
• 68% IoT job openings are for professionals with more than 5 years job experience.

IoT Jobs by Salaries:

• The median salaries being offered by advertised IoT jobs in India is INR 6.1 Lakh/ annum. Advertised salaries tend to be lower than actual salaries.
• 34% of all IoT jobs offer a salary range of 3 to 6 Lakh, followed by 33% for less than 3 Lakh.
• Almost 15% of all advertised IoT jobs in India are offering a salary of more than 10 Lakh

There are 10 companies that are hiring IoT professionals in India:

1. Cisco–  IoT Solutions Architect, Customer Support Engineer- IoT cloud, Software Engineers in IoT connectivity team and IoT Software Platform are some of the positions that Cisco is currently offering to professionals in IoT field.
2. Amazon– IoT Systems Architect, IoT Solutions Architect, Software Development Engineer- IoT, Backend Web Developer in IoT are few positions at Amazon in the field of IoT.
3. Wipro– Internet of Things – Component Developer, Predix IoT, Google IoT are few of the areas that hire IoT professionals at Wipro.
4.  L&T– Solutions Architect- IoT and M2M, IoT Engineer, positions in smart manufacturing services and others are some of the openings in IoT at L&T.
5. SAP– IoT Architect, IoT Manager, Application Engineer- IoT platform, IoT Expert, Technology consultant for IoT, are few of the openings in IoT at SAP.
6. Bosch– Bosch hires professionals for various positions such as for Bosch IoT platform, IoT suite and other profiles related to the development of sophisticated IoT applications.
7. Qualcomm– Web Apps Development Engineer- IoT and IoT Engineers are positioned high in demand at Qualcomm.
8. IBM– Application Architect, Business Sales, and Delivery Executive, Cloud Architect, Watson IoT Portfolio Marketing Manager are some of the openings in IoT at IBM among others.
9. GE– It offers Industrial IoT jobs, Software Engineer- IoT, IoT Architect, among others
10. Accenture– IoT connected vehicle, Application Developer, are a few positions for IoT professionals at Accenture.

One of the exciting happenings in the Month of August is that we hosted many meetings from various organizations, Universities, and individuals. IoT is a very exciting topic. In many cases, it seems to be a mysterious business too. Even though many wish to embark on this journey, they found it difficult to take the first step to the unknown. Unsure in which direction is the best. Thus, an exchange of ideas and exploring potential areas to collaborate is the best method to start.