LoRa IOT Home Environment Monitoring System

The LoRa IOT Home Environmental Monitoring System consists of an Arduino Mega based IOT-to-Internet gateway and Arduino Feather based remote stations with environmental sensors. The remote stations communicate wirelessly with the gateway using LoRa radios.

The system enables a homeowner to monitor the home environment via an internet accessible dashboard, receive periodic SMS environmental notifications, receive realtime SMS alerts when monitored environmental parameters exceed preset thresholds, and log environmental data to the cloud.

The objectives for this project included the following:

• Create a home IOT gateway Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Create a User Interface (UI) framework for Arduino projects
• Assess suitability of LoRa technology for the home environment

The LoRa IOT Home Environment Monitoring System consists of the following subsystems:

1. LoRa IOT Gateway - wireless sensor hub and gateway to the Internet
2. Indoor Station - wireless temperature and humidity sensor
3. Outdoor Station - wireless temperature, humidity, and pressure sensor

The LoRa IOT Gateway receives periodic readings from the remote stations and implements the following functions:

• Local time keeping synchronized with NTP
• UI Functions and local display via 2 x 16 LCD
• Alerts for over / under threshold readings via SMS
• Hourly temperature and humidity updates via SMS
• Real-time dashboard (ten minute updates) via Adafruit IO
• Long term cloud data storage on Google Drive in Google Sheets

Step 1: LoRa IOT Gateway Hardware

Step 2: Indoor Station Hardware

Step 3: Outdoor Station Hardware 

Step 4: LoRa IOT Gateway User Interface


Step 5: SMS Notifications and Alerts


Step 6: Environmental Data Cloud Storage

Step 7: Internet Accessible Dashboard

Step 8: LoRa IOT Gateway Software
RodNewHampshire/LoRa-IOT-Home-Environment-Monitoring-System: LoRa IOT Home Environment Monitoring System (github.com)

Step 9: Indoor Station Software
LoRa-IOT-Home-Environment-Monitoring-System/Indoor_Station_v1.5.0.ino at master · RodNewHampshire/LoRa-IOT-Home-Environment-Monitoring-System (github.com)
Step 10: Outdoor Station Software
LoRa-IOT-Home-Environment-Monitoring-System/Outdoor_Station_v1.5.0.ino at master · RodNewHampshire/LoRa-IOT-Home-Environment-Monitoring-System (github.com)
Step 11: IOT Gateway SD Memory Card Authentication File

The Arduino Mega SD Card slot takes a micro SD card, refer to step: LoRa IOT Gateway Hardware for details of the specific card used. Memory capacity of the SD Card is not critical. The SD Card used is 8GB, leaving plenty of memory for gateway data logging to be added in future.

Authentication data is stored on the SD card in a file called GW_Data.txt. In this way the gateway software can be deployed with out recompilation as the user specific authentication data is stored on the SD card. Think of the SD card as a SIM card in a mobile phone.