Low-power sensor nodes placed in abundance in a building can also provide precise and immediate fault-detection, allowing for tuning equipment for more efficient operation and faster maintenance during the lifetime of the building. Through these applications we demonstrate that the platform allows easy and virtually unlimited datalogging, monitoring, and analysis of real-time sensor data with low setup costs.
Here, we demonstrate three distinct applications of the Elemental platform, including: (1) deployment in a research lab for long-term data collection and automated analysis, (2) use as a full-home energy and environmental monitoring solution, and (3) fault and anomaly detection and diagnostics of individual building systems at the zone-level.
#Open source hardware monitor how to#
It also includes multiple frontends to view and analyze building activity data, which can be used directly in building controls or to provide recommendations on how to increase operational efficiency or improve operating conditions. Among its many applications, the platform allows occupants to investigate anomalies in energy usage, environmental quality, and thermal performance via a comprehensive dashboard with rich querying capabilities. The platform is built around the idea of a private, secure, and open technology for the built environment.
#Open source hardware monitor software#
It combines: (i) custom printed circuit boards (PCBs) with RFM69 frequency shift keying (FSK) radio frequency (RF) transceivers for wireless sensors, control nodes, and USB gateway, (ii) a Raspberry Pi 3B with custom firmware acting as either a centralized or distributed backhaul, and (iii) a custom dockerized application for the backend called Brood that serves as the director software managing message brokering via Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol using VerneMQ, database storage using InfluxDB, and data visualization using Grafana. Results of calibration tests and measurements to demonstrate the usefulness of this system in precision agriculture are presented.This work demonstrates an open-source hardware and software platform for monitoring the performance of buildings, called Elemental, that is designed to provide data on indoor environmental quality, energy usage, HVAC operation, and other factors to its users. Furthermore, progress in the use of this type of technology can help to develop new capabilities for growers. It can enable increased agricultural production and management of the local environment, bringing new agricultural practices to these areas. Moreover, this open source hardware can be used by a broad variety of users and is an alternative in poor rural areas because of its low cost compared to other solutions. temperature and relative humidity of the air or soil), the rate of information retrieval and so on, so it can be used in various scenarios, including environmental or land policy monitoring. The solution is scalable in terms of the type of sensors used (i.e. The system presented has two main components: a device that records environmental parameters and a smartphone application (software) that links this device to a data server in order to process and analyse the information. It was demonstrated that it is possible to design an accurate system using open source hardware and open systems to record the input for these models and monitor crops. An approach is to use crop yield models in combination with real-time data used as input in such models. Obtaining real-time non-invasive information to monitor crops or make yield predictions is a challenge. Precision agriculture combines the use of information and technology to ensure the best agricultural practices.