Development of a WSN based data logger for electrical power system

Abstract

Proper operation of any process is ensured by its continuous monitoring and monitoring of a system depends solely on the availability of data about the process variables. Traditionally wired sensor networks have been used to collect the data of the process variables as it enables the remote monitoring of the entire process from a place. The major problem with the wired sensor network includes the time needed to realize these networks as well as the cabling needed for these networks. Wireless sensor networks appear to be the best alternative to wired sensor networks in terms of ease of implementation and the time and space needed for implementation. But a wireless sensor network requires an ad-hoc network for communication and data transfer. Also, monitoring systems collect a large amount of data that itself presents a problem of handling bulk data and logging this data for future studies. For that, we need to develop a database to save this data and a mechanism for logging this data into the database automatically. This paper presents development of two vital building blocks needed in the making of a wireless sensor network, using open source tools and open standards. First is a wireless serial link for connecting nodes in a wireless sensor network. Second is the development of a database and a data logging system to log the data received from the sensor nodes into the database. The wireless serial link is realized using XBee radio modules which work on ZigBee protocol. Open source database management system, MySQL, is used to make database and to automate the task of logging the data into the database, we have used Python scripts. Both the developed systems have been used in our work of “wireless sensor network based power monitoring system”. And the results obtained there validate our developed systems.