International Electronics Symposium (IES) 2014
Politeknik Elektronika Negeri Surabaya
ISBN : 978-602-0917-14-6
Developing a Raspberry Pi-based Monitoring System
for Detecting and Securing an Object
1,2,3
Tohari Ahmad1, Hudan Studiawan2, Tirta Taruna Ramadhan3
Department of Informatics, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS)
Kampus ITS Surabaya
1
[email protected]
combined with an object recognition system. This can
be developed to be a more complex system to have
more capabilities.
Variousmonitoring systems have been developed,
ranging from relatively expensive systems such as in
[1] to those of cheapsuch as in [2][3]. Overall, many
existing systemsrequire the officers to continously
monitor the received data. This characteristic can be a
weakness of the system which results in other
disadvantages for example, wasting the energy.
Moreover, some of them only provide video streaming
which can be accessed through the internet without
anynotification of certain events.
In this paper, we propose a system which is able
to notify the user in case a suspected event occured,
provide the coordinate of the event which is linked to
an on-line map. In addition, this system employs infra
red to detect the existance of objects.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes the literatur review. Sections 3 and
4 respectively present the design and experimental
result of the proposed system. Finally, the conclusion
is drawn in section 5.
Abstract
Monitoring certain areas or territories is needed in
order to maintain the security. This often requires the
security officers to manually monitor them. This is,
however, may not be efficient due to human limitation,
such as time and coverage area factors. An electronic
monitoring may be able to solve this problem.
Nevertheless, the cost factor can be the a hindrance. In
this paper, we propose a relatively cheap monitoring
system which has capability of detecting an object
(human), calculating its distance, determining its
coordinate and taking its picture. These data are then
sent to the user through email. This real time system
has made it easier for the user to make a further
decision. The experimental result shows that this
proposed monitoring system works well and is
appropriate to use, even though in the condition when
the light is low.
Keywords: monitoring system, raspberry pi, data
communication,minimal system.
1. Introduction
A monitoring system has been widely
implemented in the world.It is oftenly used for helping
people in securing certain areas or territories. In
general, a device continously takes a picture/video and
sends it to other site where an officer receives and
monitors it. Here, a monitoring system makes it easier
for people to take a critical decision in time, according
to the data he/she receives.
A monitoring system is constructed by a camera
along with all related devices for tranferring the data.
This can be either wireless or wired devices,
depending on the nature and requirements of the
system. In some cases, wired communication is
implemented in order to maintain the quality of the
data; and in other cases, wireless communication is
more appropriate for the flexibility reason.
Despite its limitation, there some advantages of
using this system. First, it can cover an area which is
difficult for people to reach, for example, a smallsizeunder water area. Second, it is able to work
anytime.This is different from human which is unable
to work for certain times. Third, it has a capability of
relatively precise in identifying an object, if it is
2. Related Works and Devices
Embedded systems have been implemented in
various fields, which are oftenly combined with
raspberry [4]pi or arduino[5] as the main system. For
example, automatic door bell with detection [6] and
automatic railway gate controller[7]. In the field of
monitoring system, [3] employs raspberry pi to
manage the data which has been captured by a camera
whose architecture is depicted in Fig. 1. Due to its
simplicity, this system does not provide many
advanced fitures.
2.1. Raspberry Pi
Raspberry pi is a single board computer whose
size is much smaller than PC. It comprises four models
[4]: Model A, Model B, Model B+ and Compute
Module; which all use BCM2835 as the combination
of GPU and CPU to be the System on Chip. In
addition, the model A and model B have the same
board which is similar to that of model B+ but totally
different from that of the compute module.
Overall, raspberry pi present similar capability to
PC; however, due to its simpler specification, it still
125
International Electronics Symposium (IES) 2014
Politeknik Elektronika Negeri Surabaya
ISBN : 978-602-0917-14-6
has limitation. Many open source applications such as
Libre Office and web browser, can be installed to it.
camera
Monitor
input
output
optimalize a real time application. There are some
features in OpenCV which support data processing,
including: camera calibration, object detection, 3D
reconstruction and interface to video processing.
Overall, these technologies have been explored in
many applications, such as in [13][14] [15].
3. Designing the Monitoring System
In this research, we develop a system which is
able to monitor an areas, such that, wherever an object
(human) entering the coverage area, it can be detected.
By using devices described in Section 2, the developed
system is able to give real time data, notify the user
(through email) and give the coordinate of the object
which is linked to the online map.
The main devices used in this system are: PIR for
detecting the object, ranging detector for determining
the distance, NoIR camera for capturing the data even
though in the dark, and raspberry pi for processing the
data. In order to saving energy, video streaming
feature is removed from the system. This is because, it
is assumed that the system is implemented in the
remote location where the electricity is limited. Here,
we use a power bank for the experiment.
Raspberry pi
Figure 1. Architecture of Surveillance cam [3]
2.2. HC-SR501 Passive Infrared Sensor (PIR)
PIR is a sensor to detect the object movement. It
is a passive sensor which means that it does not emit
infrared rays, but it receives that of the external party.
In more details, the sensor compares the intensity of
the infrared rays from time to time. If there is an object
movement, then the intensity changes. This results in
detecting the object. For detecting the human body, the
HC-SR501 Body Sensor Module Pyroelectric Infrared
is used.
The sensor has high sensitivity which works on
ultralow votage [8]. It has power consumption 65mA
and is able to detect an object whose temperatur 20-27o
whose range detection can up to 5-7 meters.
3.1. Architecture
In more details, the system can be described in
Figs. 2 and 3 (in the form of flowchart). The system
works as follows.
a. The PIR sensor which has been integrated with
raspberry pi through socket GPIO, detects an object
(human) according to the temperature of the object
and the detection result by using the OpenCV
library.
b. Once the PIR sensor detects an object, the camera
captures a picture whose result is stored in the
raspberry pi file storage. This is followed by the
ranging detector to calculate the distance of the
object.
c. All data obtained from PIR, camera module and
ranging detector are stored in the memory of
raspberry pi.
d. The data is processed and sent to the user (security
officer) by email. This includes the picture, the
coordinate of the location which is linked to the
online map, and the distance of the object from the
camera as the supporting data.
2.3. Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera Module
Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera Module [9] is an addon module for use in the raspberry pi. It is appropriate
to use in a condition whose light is low because of its
NoIR filter. Furtermore, its size and weight are also
small (20 x 25 x 9mm and 3g, respectively) which
make it easy to use for mobility.
2.4. Ranging Detector Mod Distance Sensor HCSR04
The sensor is used for measuring the distance of
the object[10]. It works by sending 40 kHz ultrasonic
wave and detecting whether there is echo resulting
from it. Even though its maximum distance is
relatively small (5m), its accuration is quite hight
(3mm) and stable. The distance itself is calculated
according to the duration of the signal high level,
where the distance is proportional to the duration.In
addition, this sensor consists of ultrasonic transmitter,
receiver and control circuit.
2.5. Raspbian OS
Raspbian is a Debian-based operating system
developed for raspberry pi [11]. It has more than
35.000 packages which are ready to use and support
raspberry pi. So, it does not only provide services like
other operating system.
4. Implementation and Evaluation
The system is developed whose result is depicted
in Fig. 4. As its purpose, the system is evaluated to
detect a specific type of objects: a human. The system
itself consists of:
 raspberry pi
 PIR sensor HC-SR501
 ranging sensor HCSR04
 camera modul raspberry pi NoIR
 breadboard 400 tie point
2.6. OpenCV
OpenCV [12] is a free library developed based on
the BSD-license. It comprises hundreds of computer
vision and API for used in the image processing to
126
International Electronics Symposium (IES) 2014
Politeknik Elektronika Negeri Surabaya
ISBN : 978-602-0917-14-6




wireless USB adapter
power bank
SDHC card
Converter VGA to HDMI
The experimental result shows that the system
works properly if the distance of the object is less than
5m. The PIR sensor itself is able to detect an object
upto 7m successfully; however, the ranging sensor can
only accurately calculate the object distance no more
than 5m as shown in Tabel 1. It can be inferred that if
the distance of the object is more than 5m, the
calculated distance is invalid.
Start
PIR sensor detection
No
No
Object
movement
Yes
Human
Yes
Calculating the
distance
Taking a picture
Combining distance
and its coordinate
Notificaton (email)
Passive infrared
Sensor (PIR)
Moving object
End
Camera module
email
Figure 3. One cycle of object capturing process
Ranging Detector Mod
Distance Sensor
Raspberry pi
Figure 2. Data flow
Figure 4. Hardware implementation
In any light condition, the system has been able
to detect an object who captured by the sensor and
send the respected data to the user through an email.
The system is evaluated in various times. Those are:
10.33, 13.44 and 18.45. Examples of the detected and
captured object in different light condition are shown
in Figs. 5 and 6, respectively; while the coordinat of
the object which can be viewed by the user in the
online map is depicted in Fig. 7. In this case, we use
the online Google map.
Table 1. The distance of the object
No
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
127
Real distance
(m)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Detected distance
(m)
1.0564
2.1260
3.1511
4.0190
4.9920
4.9927
4.9998
4.9998
International Electronics Symposium (IES) 2014
Politeknik Elektronika Negeri Surabaya
ISBN : 978-602-0917-14-6
Figure 5. An example of the captured object when the
light is high
Figure 7. An example of the coordinat and map of the
capturedobject in the online map
5. Conclusion
Based on the experimental result, the system has
been able to detect an object (human), take the picture,
calculate its distance from the camera, calculate the
coordinate of the object and automatically send those
data to the user by using an email.
In future, this monitoring system can be enhanced
by replacing the sensors to the more advanced ones,
such that it is able to detect an object whose distance is
more than 7 meters. Furthermore, the resolution of the
captured image should also be increased to make it
easier to manually recognize the object in the image.
However, this can affect the file size sent to the user.
In addition, the reliability of the notification can
be also be increased. For example, not only by email,
but also by other means, such as SMS. The
information of the object (name, registration number,
etc) sent to the user may also be included. This feature,
however, requires the object to be registered whose
data is stored in the database. This works in certain
environment, such school where the object is students.
Figure 6. An example of the captured object when the
light islow
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International Electronics Symposium (IES) 2014
Politeknik Elektronika Negeri Surabaya
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