DESIGN OF A LOW-COST STREETLIGHT MONITORING SYSTEM USING LORA

Abstract Streetlights are public goods that beautify cities, ensure safety for road users and security for city neighborhoods. A delay in streetlight maintenance jeopardizes the safety and security of many. Also, when streetlights stay on throughout the day, it wastes power and energy and increases cost. This project presents the design of a low-cost streetlight monitoring system based on LoRa technology. In the design, a Dragino LoraWAN 868MHz (LoRa/GSM) gateway module was used alongside one LoRa shied (transceiver) and an Arduino Uno. The transceiver, Arduino, sensors, and relay formed a LoRa node which was mounted on a streetlight. There is a web application at a remote-control unit with an interface that monitors every node (streetlight) connected to the system. Data about each node was sent to the gateway which uploaded it to the LoRa App server. The LoRa App server decoded the data and made it available through the RESTful API. The data on the LoRa server was accessed via the API using an HTTP integration and was displayed on the web application at the remote monitoring centre. The test LoRa node was able to send accurate information about the state of the streetlight to the LoRa server, and it was accurately displayed at the monitoring unit web interface or dashboard. The node was also able to switch on/off or dim the streetlight at the right times