Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer and Communication Engineering 2008 May 13-15, 2008 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Web-Based Wireless Data Acquisition System using 32bit Single Board

Computer

R. B. Ahmad1, W. M. A. Mamat1, M. R. Mohamed Juhari2, S. Daud1, N. W. Arshad3

1
School of Computer and Communication Engineering
2
School of Mechatronic Engineering
Universiti Malaysia Perlis
P. O. Box 77, d/a Pejabat Pos Besar, 01007 Kangar, Perlis, Malaysia
3
Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Universiti Malaysia Pahang
Karung Berkunci 12, 25000 Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia
badli@unimap.edu.my

Abstract testing and modification of logic circuitry without

The design and architecture of a web-based
wireless data acquisition system are presented. This
system provides a web interface for remote monitoring
of sensors deployed which connected using wireless
technology. The design utilizes the 32bit single board
computer as processor board to provide low cost and
low power data acquisition system. Two main part of
this system are Sensor Node (SN) and Web Server
(WS). The SN is function as Data Acquisition Unit
which contains processor board and connected to
analog inputs while WS function as storage unit. The
transmission of collected data between SN and WS is
using 802.11b wireless network technology. This
system is preferably deploy for large monitoring
system such as for agriculture and environmental.
I. INTRODUCTION
The standard data acquisition system (DAS)
contains three elements, acquisition hardware, storage
unit and data transmission method. Acquisition
hardware play vital role on benchmarking the
performance of DAS. Most of the previous research is
using PC as acquisition hardware [1, 2]. The trend is
then changing from standard PC to high speed PC to
provide better performance on data processing and
transferring to storage unit. The microcontroller based
DAS is also most popular platform since it is low cost
and suitable for simple and small application [3].
Several developments using embedded system
platform such as Field Programmable Gate Array
(FPGA) as Data Acquisition Unit (DAU) that enable
hardware modification [4]. The Digital Signal
Processor (DSP) board is also chosen as processor
board to handle real-time computation process. The
other current trend on embedded technology
application is using single board computer (SBC) as
processor board. One big advantage of using an SBC is
it can handle multitasking process since its running a
modular Operating System (OS) [5]. The development
can be done using high level language such as C, java
and Perl and is widely use, flexible and have many
support from open source community. However, the
key to select processor board is the purpose of its
application so that the functionality should be optimum
regarding to processor board specifications.
The organization of this paper as follow, Section II
outlines the architecture of the system. Section III
explains the processor board. The software
development and data transmission are described on
Section IV and V respectively. Section VI shows the
results and Section VII summarizes the overall
research output.
II. SYSTEM OVERVIEW
The data acquisition system using 32bit SBC is
outlines as shown in Figure 1. This system is separated
to two parts, Sensor Node (SN) and Web Server (WS).
Figure 1. The data acquisition system using single board computer

978-1-4244-1692-9/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE 777

 On the SN side, there are two main processes; the
analog input reading and the client process. Data from
SN is send to server using client-server programming.
The analog input reading is describing detail in section
IV while the client-server programming is explain in
section V.
At WS, the LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL +
PHP) packages are used. For database purpose the
MySQL is choose while PHP is used to develop a web
page. The server process is running on WS to received
data from SN.
III. PROCESSOR BOARD
Nowadays the SBC is mostly chosen to be used in
research to reduce the development time. It is also low
power consumption and low cost. The availability to
control via operating system and using high level
programming is also taken into the account [6]. An
embedded Linux platform is widely use because of the
reusable device drivers and application program and
more convenient on solving problems within the open
source community.
The TS-5500 model from Technologic Systems
(TS) [7] is use for this research as show in Figure 2. It
running 133 MHz AMD Elan 520 processor and built
in using x86 architecture. This power requirement to
run this board is 5V DC @ 500 mA. It manufactured
with 64MB of high speed SDRAM. The OS is loaded
and running from Card Flash (CF) which replaced the
hard disk. The system interfaces are COM port (serial),
USB, digital input/output (DIO), analog to digital
converter (ADC), LCD port and matrix keypad port
(DIO). The 10/100 Ethernet interface and PCMCIA
type II slot also included for networking purpose.
COM2 port is used to communicate between SBC and
development desktop using emulator program such as
minicom and hyperterminal.
Figure 2. The TS-5500 SBC
IV. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
The SN is running TS-Linux which has been built
by TS Company. This embedded OS is quite similar to
standard Linux distribution in terms of configuration
but small in capacity because its only includes
important packages so that it can be loaded onto small
device such as CF. TS-Linux does not installed GNU
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C/C++ Compiler (GCC) package by default, therefore
the source code have to be compiled on development
desktop. The desktop should be installed with Linux
distribution that has similar libraries version to TS-
Linux to avoid mismatch or library incompatible
during running binary file [8].
The requirement for WS side is including Apache
server, PHP and MySQL database. All those features
are available within Mandriva 2006. The software
development of this system is using C language
including analog input reading and data transmission.
The shell script programming is also uses to handle
administration tasks. Figure 4 outlines the software
model for this system.
Figure 3. The software model of DAS system
A. Analog input reading
The analog to digital converter (ADC) embed on
TS-5500 board is MAXIM197 [9] which support 8
channel of analog inputs and provide 12-bit digital
outputs. Each channel is independently software
programmable for unipolar or bipolar conversion
within four ranges of analog input: -10V to +10V, -5V
to +5V, 0V to +10V and 0V to +5V.
A source code named sensor is written to read
analog inputs. The 12bits digital output of ADC is
calculated into decimal value to present the result in
voltage reading. The input mode (positive or negative)
can be determined by reading MSB bit. If the MSB bit
is ‘0’ then the input is positive and negative if ‘1’. For
negative reading process, there is two’s compliment
process to convert the result into positive mode. All
analog inputs reading will be loaded to shared memory
in SN.
B. Shell scripting
Shell script defined as series of command written in
plain text file. Typical operations performed by shell
scripts include file manipulation, program execution,
and printing text. At SN, shell script is use to run the
sensor and client program. At the same time, shell
script is also use to run these programs automatically
during the processor board boot up. While at WS, the
shell script handle the data loading into the database
after read the previous client connection status from technology such as radio frequency (RF), infra red (Ir),
status file. Bluetooth, wireless LAN (WLAN) and Zigbee. The
WLAN can be divided to three categories which are
802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g which differ in term of
C. Web page platform
transfer rate. Table 1 outlines the summary of wireless
The collected data is presenting with graph format on a technologies [10].
web page. Therefore user can view the current and In this research, the transmission of collected data is
previous data through internet. The page is developed done using 802.11b wireless network technology. TS-
using PHP and MySQL database use to store all data. 5500 uses 16-bit PCMCIA model MA401 Wi-Fi PC
In current mode, the graph is fixed to several date card from NetGear Company. The operating range of
parameters which are today, yesterday, previous 7 days this model is up to 500 feet indoors and 1650 feet
and monthly. While in selection mode, the graph is outdoors. The closed area is chosen for this research at
generate regarding to date parameters given by user. this moment. The server is connected to wireless router
to enable the wireless communication between SN and
WS.
V. DATA TRANSMISSION
TABLE 1: TRANSFER RATE OF WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES
Data from SN is send to server using client-server
programming. The data is sent in string format to the Technology Transfer rate
server for every sensor’s reading. The connection Spike 75.06 / 35.88 kbps
status is always recorded by the client process in a Zigbee 250 kbps
status file as shown in Figure 3. If the network is Bluetooth 768 kbps
broken, the data will be stored in a data-log file at SN. Nanonet 2 000 kbps
The data-log file will be sending to server after the WLAN, IEEE 802.11b 11 000 kbps
network established. WLAN, IEEE 802.11g 22 000 kbps
The server is always listening to the client WLAN, IEEE 802.11 a 54 000 kbps
connection to receive the data. First, it will receive
previous client connection status. If the status received
is ‘0’, the string format data will be received and then VI. RESULT
will be saved in a data-log file. If the status received is
‘-1’ which mean broken status, the server process will The ADC is set up to read all eight analog channels
receive a data-log file from client. using bipolar mode within 5V range. The reading
resolution is calculated as below;

A. Wireless networking ADC resolution = 5/2^(12-1) = 2.44 mV

There are a lot of wireless protocols in current

Figure 4. The reading to check bit error

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 Figure 5. The reading of real value inputs

An analysis of bit error and reading persistence has
been tested. All channels are given 0V by connecting
to the SBC ground. Figure 6 show the result from SN
that has been taken from sensor process. The average
of bit error is one step resolution or 0.05%.
% bit error = 2.44 mV / 5V * 100% = 0.05 %
The reading consistency is also been analyzed.
Channel 0 and channel with even number is given
+0.5V while all channel with odd number is given -
0.5V. The output of this reading is show on Figure 5.
For testing application, the chalcogenide based
potentiometry electrode from Sensor Systems [11] is
used to measure several chemical elements in water.
The sensors were used are Cu2+, Hg+, Cr(VI) and Fe3+
ion selective electrodes. The output of these sensors is
in voltage when the sensors react with reference
electrode in medium used. A signal conditioning
circuit is used to buffer the impedance of the sensor
before attaching to SBC.
Two reading is viewed in graph format with two
modes which are current reading and selected reading
as shown in Figure 6. The current reading includes
today, yesterday, previous 7 days and monthly date
parameters. Figure 7 shows the current reading of
today which retrieved from the database. While in
selected mode, user can view data for specific date and
time as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 6. The data centre page

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Figure 7. The today reading in current reading mode

Figure 8. The reading of the selected date and time

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 VII. CONCLUSIONS
This paper describes a web-based data acquisition
system using 32bit SBC. The system is divided into
two parts, Sensor Node (SN) and Web Server (WS).
The software development of the system is focus on
analog input reading, data transmission and data access
using web page. The sensor reading is reliable and
precise. User can access to the data collected which
viewed in graph format since it is connected with
internet. This system can be deployed to monitor river
or beach, and large scale such monitoring such as in
agriculture and environment fields. It also can be
deploy to read any analog sensors such as for sewer or
septic early warning system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors acknowledge Universiti Malaysia Perlis
(UniMAP) and Ministry of Science, Technology and
Innovation for providing the Science fund research
grant (9005-00004) that enabled the production of this
research project.
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