Development of an IoT based Environmental Pressure Monitoring System for prediction of Thunderstorm

An accurate measurement of barometric pressure is required for the environmental monitoring system to comprehend the local weather conditions. The displacement of the mercury level in the barometric tube is found to be directly proportional to the atmospheric pressure. The present paper, describes a Non-contact capacitance type level sensor for barometric pressure measurement. A modified linear operational amplifier-based De’ Sauty bridge network having adjustable bridge sensitivity is used to measure the change in capacitance caused by variations in mercury level, which is directly related to changes in atmospheric pressure. The signal conditioning circuit standardizes the results. The studies have been made with glass tube sensors in a Mercury storage tank with mercury as the conducting liquid. The paper presents the experimental findings of the static properties of the pressure sensor with percentage error from linearity. Within the bounds of experimental error, these results are found to have good linearity and repeatability. Again, in the second phase of development, the output of the signal conditioner circuit has been fed to the analog input terminal of an Arduino WeMOS D1 board fitted with ESP 8266 WiFi module to send the pressure sensor data to the IoT platform for remote monitoring and analysis. If the pressure data from the IoT platform indicates that barometric condition for severe thunderstorm has appeared, immediately the alarm can be set to alert the people in that location, where the sensor is mounted. The ThingSpeak IoT platform has been used in the present work and MATLAB analysis of the pressure sensor data in that IoT platform has been performed for prediction of thunderstorm.