IOT Based Coal Mine Safety Monitoring and Alerting System using Arduino
This project is one of the important IOT projects. The project consists of two modules that are the receiver and the transmitter modules. IOT based coal mine safety monitoring and alerting system project is proposed for the purpose of implementing security and detection of hazards inside a coal mine. The transmitter module has temperature, smoke, and methane sensors installed in it. The transmitter module also carries an LCD and an RF transmitter. The receiver module consists of an RF receiver, an LCD display, and a WiFi module. All the sensor data is transmitted to the remote IOT server every 2 minutes. The circuit also contains an alarm buzzer.
Coal is one of the most important commodities and raw materials for a number of industries. Coal is used for power generation as well as the extraction of many by-product chemicals and materials. The extraction of coal from the coal mine is, however, a complex and dangerous process. Many accidents have taken place in the coal mines the world over which causes fatalities and economic losses. The dangers and hazards can be reduced significantly by making use of the latest smart technologies.
Operation of the IOT Based Coal Mine Safety Monitoring Project
IOT Based Coal Mine Safety Monitoring project consists of two hardware modules, one transmitter, and one receiver. The main controller in both modules is an Arduino board.
Transmitter module: It is installed inside the coal mine. The transmitter module contains the smoke sensor, temperature sensor, and methane sensor. The transmitter module also has an LCD. All the sensor data is displayed on the LCD display by Arduino. The RF transmitter present on the transmitter module sends the sensor data to the receiver module.
Receiver module: It has an Arduino controller, LCD display, and an RF receiver. The RF receiver receives the sensor values from the RF transmitter on the transmitter module. The received sensor values are displayed on the LCD screen. The Arduino also sends the sensor data to the remote IOT server using the WiFi module every two minutes. If any of the sensor values exceeds a particular threshold level, the buzzer is turned on to notify the concerned personnel.
The remote server has an IOT platform installed on it which displays the relevant data using the GUI which helps the users in monitoring and system control.
Block Diagram of the IOT Based Coal Mine Safety Monitoring Project
Description of the block diagram
The project block diagram consists of the following sub-blocks and devices
Temperature sensor: It measures the temperature inside the mine.
Methane gas sensor: It measures the methane gas levels inside the mine.
Smoke sensor: It detects fire and smoke inside the mine.
The LCD screen on the transmitter module displays the sensor data.
The LCD screen on the receiver module also displays the sensor data for viewers outside the mine.
The RF transmitter module sends the sensor values to the receiver module outside the mine.
The RF receiver module on the receiver side receives the sensor values from inside the mine.
The WiFi module on the receiver sends the sensor data to the remote IOT server over the WIFi connection.
The buzzer is turned on when any of the sensor values crosses a predefined threshold.
Applications, advantages, and enhancements of the IOT Based Coal Mine Safety Monitoring and Alerting System project
The project is built from easily available and reasonably priced components. Therefore, the cost is reasonable and maintenance is easy.
This project is crucial in the coal mining industry and is critical for the health and safety of the mine workers.
The crucial parameters from inside the mine can be monitored from anywhere in the world by the supervisors and managers using the remote IOT platform. This can result in better management and improved production standards.
This is a safety-critical project, therefore this system can be improved by making it fail-safe. We can implement the fail-safe operation using redundancy in the system. If one module fails then the parallel module will take over the operation.
Sofware specifications:
Arduino IDE software is used to develop the embedded C language code.
EAGLE PCB Layout software is used to design the PCB layout of the project.
Any IOT platform or IOT website that can display the values of the sensor in Graphical format.