test will determine the functionality of the hardware
5.1 CONCLUSION AND RECOMENDATION
5.1 Conclusion
Street light monitoring system using GSM/GPRS network is aimed to improve the efficiency of existing street light monitoring. With the implementation of the system, human involvement in identifying faulty street lights may be reduced to minimal level which may enable more human involvement in the maintenance works. Street light is an important entity to the public as it plays an important role in the public safety and ensuring the safety of road users.
The proposed system improved the existing street light monitoring system by collecting conditions of street lights from transmitters located at each street light. The collected data is retransmitted to a central monitoring server for viewing by the operator. The updates can be viewed using the web browser thus providing easy access for the operator to view and monitor the street lights.
The system is composed of two separate sections. One section is focusing on receiving inputs from the local transmitter and re-transmitting the received data to the central monitoring server. Another section is for receiving data and managing that data in a server so that operators can assess the condition of the street lights. It is important to notice that the strategy and method used to enable all street lights in one area to transmit data to receiving input module is beyond the scope of this project.
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This project is more concerned about the transmission of data using GSM/GPRS network to the server.
The prototype managed to send data to the server. However the prototype is not capable to provide reliable solution to monitor street lights. The problems with the prototype are inconsistency to connect to the server and the prototype tends to stop responding when it has problems with the GSM/GPRS modem. In order to improve the prototype, more features should be added to the prototype. The future improvements on the prototype are described in recommendations.
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Before the prototype could achieve the objective of providing a reliable street light monitoring system, the prototype requires some modifications. The modifications are necessary to overcome with the problem discussed in previous chapter.
Following are the features to be embedded into the prototype to produce a more reliable system.
a. Interrupts based on timer to bring out the system from system halt.
Every time the prototype issues a command and waits for the response from the modem, the timer will start to ticks. The modem should response before the timer expires. If the modem fails to response, the prototype will issue command to solve the problem.
b. Additional circuit and algorithm to release the modem from errors.
In
the event of serious errors, simply restarting the modem could bring back the modem to work properly. To achieve this additional circuits are required to actually turn the modem off and turn it on again. Additional algorithm is also required to detect the condition that required modem reset.
c. Write an efficient and better code for socket application.
On the server side, one socket application is waiting for incoming connection from the prototype. The application is very crucial as it is the one which will acknowledge or refuse an incoming connection. From the test, the application still has unsolved bugs. Other problem with the socket application is it takes time to update and response to the prototype.
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Better socket application code will reduce time spend on transmitting data.
d. Send data in blocks to reduce number of negotiations with the server.
Waiting for responses from the server causes the prototype to be less efficient. More time waiting means less time is spend on sending data.
The efficiency could be improved by sending data in blocks. Whenever possible, arrange the data into blocks and send many set of updates in one session. However, ones need to consider of providing real times updates to central monitoring station. Thus, before adding this feature ones need to consider trade off between efficiency and real time monitoring requirement.
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transmission of data from the field. It is already decided to use GPRS because it is economically feasible. However GPRS implementation requires more knowledge on networking as FTP server need to be setup before any transmission. Setup the server before transmission is a challenging task. Enhancing the system with good Graphical
User Interface might be possible when the task complete within the specified timeline.
Some hardware will be developed to automate the process of retrieving the data from the wireless network. The data retrieved will then be stored in the FTP
server at remote location using the internet. Some programming is required to program the GSM/GPRS application board, the microcontroller and the Xbee module itself. All the components need to be integrated properly to make sure it will function
as it is intended.
More progress is expected after the submission of the report. The future research will be more the communication because it is the main objective of this project. The system should receive raw data from field, transmit to the operator system and view
in GUI.
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