Smart Street Light Using NodeMCU and IOT ThingSpeak

There have been a limited number of streets in smart societies, and over the last few decades, street lamps and management regulation have been relatively simple. However, as the world has become a more prosperous community and as urbanization has increased, the number of smart societies in modern cities has increased rapidly. As a result, regulating and maintaining street lights for smart societies and cities became a problem. It is also considered to be the first generation of the original street light control, which is inefficient and wastes manpower. At the moment, street lamps control much of the urban environment only through manual control, via a control switch installed in each street lamp. A significant amount of electrical energy is lost. So we have created a solution for that problem which is an automatic street light only using NodeMCU, LDR sensor and IR sensor. In this project, LDR sensor is function to glow only when it in darkness and dark when only in brightness while for IR sensor is used to detect objects by sensing infrared radiations reflected from the objects which means if there is an object passing by, the light will turn on and if there is no object passing by, the light will turn off. This detection can be monitored through ThingSpeak and IoT platform on your computer.

• ESP8266 NodeMCU - 1
• Micro USB cable - 1
• LEDs -3
• Jumper wires - Depends on connection
• IR sensors - 3
• LDR sensors -1

As showed on that video above, this step-by-step manufacturing of the project producing an output that will be save and consume less energy which is the light will glow up only if there are any detection of an object. In fact, WiFi is used to provide wireless communication, as ThingSpeak that we use in this project is to send the data in a graph figure toward admin.

The connections are pretty basic.

To connect the sensor, there are 3 leads. One end of the LDR sensor is connected to VIN and other end is connected to fixed resistance which is further connected to ground. NodeMCU has one ADC pin (A0) which is connected to point between fixed resistance and one end of the LDR sensor as shown in the circuit diagram. Since the LDR sensor gives variable resistance therefore variable voltage will be generated at A0 according to the amount of light falling on LDR. While, IR sensor has 3 pins, two of which are VCC and ground and one is output pin. The VCC end is connected to VIN pin, while ground end connected to GND pin output pin is connected to D0, D1 and D2 pin for three IR sensor respectively. The output of IR sensor gets high if detects presence of some object. This pin is connected to GPIO pin of NodeMCU so whenever the IR sensor detects someone passing through the street it triggers the Street light. In our case one LED will be turned on. Furthurmore, the led has 3 pins, this 3 led connected to D7, D6 and D5 pins respectively.

Detail Instruction:

Bright or Dark Detection

Connect the LDR sensor to pins on Nodemcu ESP8266.

1. Connect a jumper wire from any one of the end to NodeMCU VIN pin

2. Connect a jumper wire from another end to NodeMCU A0 pin

2. Connect a resistor to the NodeMCU GND

Detection of an object

Connect the IR sensor to pins on Nodemcu ESP8266.

1. Connect a jumper wire from VCC to NodeMCU VIN pin

2. Connect a jumper wire from GND to NodeMCU GND pin

3. Connect a jumper wire from Output to one of the pin which is D0, D1 and D2 for IR sensors respectively

Object presence

Connect the LED to pins on NodeMCU ESP8266.

1. Connect a jumper wire from anode end to one of the pin which is D7, D6 and D5 for leds respectively

2. Connect another end of leds to negative line same with the GND line

Step 1: Open Arduino IDE and Go to Sketch -> Include Library -> Manage Libraries

Step2: Now search for ThingSpeak in library manager and install ThingSpeak library by MathWorks

Step 1: Now we will upload the LDR sensor, IR sensors and leds data on the ThingSpeak. Go to https://thingspeak.com/ and start by signing up if you don’t have account on it

Step 2: Now Click on New Channel and then give some name to your channel and then fill the fields as shown below. Field 1 is for LDR sensor data, Field 2 to Field 4 are for IR sensors, Field 5 to Field 7 are for LEDS. After filling the details scroll down and click on “Save Channel”.

Step 3: Your channel will be created and now you will be able to see field charts. Now Click on API Keys and copy channel id, read and write API keys and paste them in the Arduino code given at the end of the tutorial. Now upload the Arduino code to the NodeMCU. On successfully uploading, test your project by putting objects in front of IR sensors. You will be able to see the change in the ThingSpeak charts for every change in values of LDR, ir sensors and LEDs.

Step 1: First include all the required libraries.

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>; 

#include <WiFiClient.h>; 

#include <ThingSpeak.h>; 

Step 2: Replace SSID and password given in code with you Wi-Fi SSID and password

const char* ssid = "UniSZA-WiFi"; 

const char* password = "unisza2016"; 

Step 3: Copy channel number, read and write API keys from ThingSpeak as shown below

unsigned long myChannelNumber = 1778641; 

const char * myWriteAPIKey = "CBWL1EPYK078WV49"; 

const char * myReadAPIKey = "HS82229EGKQ9IO2O"; 

Step 4: Define variable for GPIO pins of leds and IR sensors, ADC channel

int ir1 = D0; 

int led1 = D5; 

int ir2 = D1; 

int led2 = D6; 

int ir3 = D2; 

int led3 = D7; 

int ldr = A0; 

int val =0; 

Step 5: Set the pinMode for pins of led and IR sensor on the NodeMCU

 pinMode(ir1,INPUT); 

 pinMode(led1,OUTPUT); 

 pinMode(ir2,INPUT); 

 pinMode(led2,OUTPUT); 

 pinMode(ir3,INPUT); 

 pinMode(led3,OUTPUT); 

Step 6: Initialization of Wi-Fi and ThingSpeak

 WiFi.begin(ssid, password); 

 ThingSpeak.begin(client); 

Step 7: Now we take digital value of the IR sensors and analog value of LDR sensor and store them in variables.

 int s1 = digitalRead(ir1); 

 int s2 = digitalRead(ir2); 

 int s3 = digitalRead(ir3); 

 int l1 = digitalRead(led1); 

 int l2 = digitalRead(led2); 

 int l3 = digitalRead(led3); 

 val = analogRead(ldr); 

Step 8: Initialize back the declaration of IR, LDR sensor reading and led to display at the serial monitor

 Serial.print(s1); 

 Serial.print(":"); 

 Serial.print(s2); 

 Serial.print(":"); 

 Serial.print(s3); 

 Serial.print(":"); 

 Serial.print(l1); 

 Serial.print(":"); 

 Serial.print(l2); 

 Serial.print(":"); 

 Serial.print(l3); 

 Serial.print(" "); 

 Serial.println(val); 

Step 9: Now check the value of LDR sensor for low light. Here we have set value as 200 means if the analog value of LDR is lower than 200 then it will be night time or low light and hence it will turn on the led if IR sensors detect some obstacle or motion. If the analog value of the LDR sensor is more than 200 then it will be considered as daytime and LEDs will not glow even if IR sensor detects someone passing the street.

 if(val<=200) 

 { 

  if(s1==0) 

  { 

   digitalWrite(led1,HIGH); 

  } 

  else 

  { 

   digitalWrite(led1,LOW); 

  } 

  if(s2==0) 

  { 

   digitalWrite(led2,HIGH); 

  } 

  else 

  { 

   digitalWrite(led2,LOW); 

  } 

  if(s3==0) 

  { 

   digitalWrite(led3,HIGH); 

  } 

  else 

  { 

   digitalWrite(led3,LOW); 

  } 

 } 

 else 

 { 

  digitalWrite(led1,LOW); 

  digitalWrite(led2,LOW); 

  digitalWrite(led3,LOW); 

}

Step 10: Finally upload the data on the ThingSpeak cloud by using function ThingSpeak.writeField(). It take channel number, field number, data (you want to upload in respective field) and write API key. Here we are uploading LDR sensor data, IR sensors data and LEDs data to the ThingSpeak cloud.

ThingSpeak.writeField(myChannelNumber, 1,val, myWriteAPIKey); 

 ThingSpeak.writeField(myChannelNumber, 2,s1, myWriteAPIKey); 

 ThingSpeak.writeField(myChannelNumber, 3,s2, myWriteAPIKey); 

 ThingSpeak.writeField(myChannelNumber, 4,s3, myWriteAPIKey); 

 ThingSpeak.writeField(myChannelNumber, 5,digitalRead(led1), myWriteAPIKey); 

 ThingSpeak.writeField(myChannelNumber, 6,digitalRead(led2), myWriteAPIKey); 

 ThingSpeak.writeField(myChannelNumber, 7,digitalRead(led3), myWriteAPIKey); 

Step 1: Log On to your account

Step 2: Go to My Channel then click private view. All the data that had been received from NodeMCU will display as graph figure