Development of a forum to implement IOT that showcases the weather information of a building within a community.

Abstract

The use of IoT devices in monitoring the condition of the environment has significantly enhanced the manner at which environmental data is collected and presented as these devices facilitate access to real time data which can be used in making forecast and enabling fast decision. For this thesis, the documentation of the development of IoT-based weather monitoring system has been well presented with the objective to design a reliable and trustworthy weather monitoring system integrated with community forums that displays weather data such as surrounding temperature, humidity, UV intensity and motion detection using selected sensors to read the data and a microprocessor to process and transmit it to the Blynk mobile application and a custom built web platform to facilitate accessibility and community engagement. In the development ESP8266 microcontroller was used as the main microprocessor which other sensors such as DHT22 sensors for temperature and humidity, a UV sensor for light intensity, and a PIR sensor for motion detection were all connected. The Blynk app where the weather data was retrieved from the microprocessor was visualized ensured the display of weather data in real-time while the web interface which retrieved the data through the API of the Blynk app and was built using HTML, CSS, React and MYSQL provided a dynamic view of the data and facilitate community interaction with the system. After the system development, testing was done to validate the functionality and performance of the system. The functionality testing ensured that the sensors produced accurate result and ensure seamless transmission from the microprocessors to where it is visualized while the performance testing confirmed low latency in system updates and stable operation. The outcome of the testing indicated that the system was reliable and also the sensor readings also align closely with external weather platforms like AccuWeather and Weather.com. This findings shows the potential of the system to provide localized real-time weather data and foster community interaction through the developed web application. This study contributes to the field of IoT by showing how affordable IoT systems can address environmental challenges particularly in vulnerable communities where they may not have the luxury to acquire expensive components. It also provides a foundation for further exploration where there can be integration of predictive analytics, more user friendly interface and integration of more weather readings.