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How does the system work?
How does the system work?
Snowfall Detection
Snowfall Detection
The foremost aspect of the system is to detect the presence of snowfall. A combination of sensors will be used to determine such criteria. The sensors are as follows: -
•A temperature sensor will determine the presence of certain temperature that is essential for snowfall.
•A water sensor will detect the presence of water droplets on the surface of sensor plate.
Why such combination of sensors?
Why such combination of sensors?
Such a combination is important since there are situations where the temperature of the environment is nearly 0° Celsius, but no snowfall occurs. This is a common weather feature in Canada and it is not an effective way to determine snowfall just on the basis of a freezing point temperature.
Thus, it was decided to implement a water detector sensor. Since during a snowfall, the small and light snow crystals often melt their bottom surface. Thus, on contact with the water detection sensor plate, the water content will be detected by the sensor hence when both criteria are met together, the presence of snowfall will be successfully confirmed.
Salt Sprinkling Process
Salt Sprinkling Process
After the snowfall is detected, the system then is initiated for the salt sprinkling action. First the servo motor, changes its angle of action towards first angle of 0 degrees.
Then the Infrared sensor placed on top of salt sprinkler assembly detects for any obstacles on the driveway, such as a parked car or a moving pedestrian.
After there is no obstacle detected, the motor placed inside the custom designed and printed salt sprinkle assembly, starts to scatter the salt crystals out of the cylinder towards the driveway surface. This event takes place for around 5 seconds.
Then the servo motor changes its angle of action to 30 degrees and lastly 60 degrees. The whole process cycle is repeated 3 times in order to sprinkle the salt crystals in an evenly manner such that almost every area of the driveway is covered without wasting much salt crystals.
The angle of action can be adjusted to maximum of 120 degrees as well as the number of cycles, depending upon the surface area of driveway.
Salt Level Monitoring
Salt Level Monitoring
In addition to the normal processes, the system is also equipped with real-time salt level monitoring capability. The salt crystals container is equipped with an ultrasonic sensor that measures the distance between the salt crystals and the container cap.
By this method, the ultrasonic sensor can determine the approximate amount of salt content left in the container and notify the owner. Such a feature is very useful especially in times of winter season when the person has to manually check if the salt container has sufficient amount of salt or not.
IOT Capabilities
IOT Capabilities
Providing the system with an IOT functionality was one of the major aspects. By using such a system, the functionality of the system as well as all of its sensors could be monitored in real time.
Such a capability becomes very useful and makes it even more easier for the user to monitor the system in real time, no matter where they are in the world, as long as they have access to an internet connection and a device.
The Microcontroller Unit, ESP-32 has an inbuilt Wi-Fi capability in its core such that no external Wi-Fi device is needed to transmit data to the cloud. This system uses Node-red as its IOT platform and an MQTT server that acts as a bridge between the Node-red and ESP-32.
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