Low-cost IoT-based Portable Sensor Node for Fire and Air Pollution Detection and Alarming

Early detection of fires is crucial in avoiding loss of life and property resulting from fire disasters. The great development in sensor technology, and electronics has made achieving this goal with high efficiency within reach. In this work, a low-cost Internet of Things-based sensor node was developed to detect several air pollution factors such as smoke and beginning fires, as well as the presence of dust, solid fine particles, and toxic and hazardous gases in laboratory environments. The node implements the target tasks by processing the data obtained from different sensors to enable an early warning of possible hazardous/toxic pollutions, fires, or one of the factors that precede the outbreak of a fire. Data from temperature and humidity sensors, measuring the level of carbon dioxide gas, volatile organic compounds, and nitrogen oxides in the air, in addition to measuring the concentrations of particulate matter PMl, PM2.5, and PMlO in the air, were used to determine the fire alarm threshold using an algorithm prepared for this purpose. All data from the used sensors can be viewed and monitored wirelessly via the cloud using an loT-based microcontroller, the Node-Red platform, and the MQTT Broker server. The system was tested using different samples of burned materials several times to ensure the effectiveness and reliability of the system. Preliminary results revealed that the system can be used as an effective method in laboratories, homes and places exposed to the risk of fire and chemical pollution.