Wireless sensor network system using Raspberry Pi and zigbee for environmental monitoring applications

With over a decade of intensive research and development, wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has been emerging as a feasible solution to many innovative applications. In this paper, we describe a wireless sensor network system that we have developed using open-source hardware platforms, Raspberry Pi and zigbee. The system is low-cost, low power consuming and highly scalable both in terms of the type of sensors and the number of sensor nodes, which makes it well suited for a wide variety of applications related to environmental monitoring. Raspberry Pi is cheap, flexible, fully customizable and programmable small computer embedded linux board and abilities of its usage as WSN node and sensor node. Raspberry Pi works as a base station which connects the sensor nodes via zigbee protocol in the wireless sensor network and collects sensors data from different sensors, and supply multi-clients services including data display. The client can visit the base station remotely via (website) Ethernet or command console.