ArticlePDF Available

Abstract and Figures

span lang="EN-US">The four main causes of crane accidents are overturned, falls, mechanical failure, and contact with power lines. It is important to keep track of the crane’s health and condition as it is always too late when a failure of the crane was found. Any abrupt accidents will interrupt or delay the work progress and cause the operational costs to increase. Crane monitoring system is developed using long range (LoRa) technology due to its long range of detections making it suitable for monitoring machines that require large space including the dock area. It also consumes low power and is suitable for battery-operated systems. This paper discusses the design and development crane monitoring system using Arduino Uno together with NodeMCU ESP8266 as the hardware for this project. Temperature, power consumption, lifting activities, and total operating hours will be measured using appropriate sensors. The data will then be sent to the database where users can monitor each crane from a developed Android application using a mobile phone. This project allows users to view, monitor, and analyze real-time or past data in a graph or table view. Experimental results prove the proposed system is applicable and effective.</span
Content may be subject to copyright.
International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE)
Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2023, pp. 2223~2232
ISSN: 2088-8708, DOI: 10.11591/ijece.v13i2.pp2223-2232 2223
Journal homepage: http://ijece.iaescore.com
Crane monitoring system based on internet of things using long
range
Ng Wen Jun1, Norlezah Hashim1, Fakrulradzi Idris2, Ida Syafiza1, Nurbahirah Norddin3
1Centre for Telecommunication Research and Innovation, Fakulti Teknologi Kejuruteraan Elektrik dan Elektronik,
Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Durian Tunggal, Malaysia
2Centre for Telecommunication Research and Innovation, Fakulti Kejuruteraan Elektronik dan Kejuruteraan Komputer,
Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Durian Tunggal, Malaysia
3Centre for Robotics and Industrial Automation, Fakulti Teknologi Kejuruteraan Elektrik dan Elektronik, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia
Melaka, Durian Tunggal, Malaysia
Article Info
ABSTRACT
Article history:
Received Mar 22, 2022
Revised Sep 19, 2022
Accepted Oct 15, 2022
The four main causes of crane accidents are overturned, falls, mechanical
failure, and contact with power lines. It is important to keep track of the
crane’s health and condition as it is always too late when a failure of the
crane was found. Any abrupt accidents will interrupt or delay the work
progress and cause the operational costs to increase. Crane monitoring
system is developed using long range (LoRa) technology due to its long
range of detections making it suitable for monitoring machines that require
large space including the dock area. It also consumes low power and is
suitable for battery-operated systems. This paper discusses the design and
development crane monitoring system using Arduino Uno together with
NodeMCU ESP8266 as the hardware for this project. Temperature, power
consumption, lifting activities, and total operating hours will be measured
using appropriate sensors. The data will then be sent to the database where
users can monitor each crane from a developed Android application using a
mobile phone. This project allows users to view, monitor, and analyze
real-time or past data in a graph or table view. Experimental results prove
the proposed system is applicable and effective.
Keywords:
Crane
Internet of things
Long range
Monitoring system
Sensors
This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license.
Corresponding Author:
Norlezah Hashim
Centre for Telecommunication Research and Innovation, Fakulti Teknologi Kejuruteraan Elektrik dan
Elektronik, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka
Hang Tuah Jaya, 76100 Durian Tunggal, Melaka, Malaysia
Email: norlezah@utem.edu.my
1. INTRODUCTION
The condition of the crane will directly affect the chance of an accident happening and the cost to
maintain the crane. This is because the cranes are usually exposed to harsh environments and always operate
at high-duty cycles. Thus, any problem related to the cranes should be identified before it occurs to prevent
tragedy [1]. To solve this problem, a monitoring system will be needed. This monitoring system should be
able to monitor four basic information: the running hours, the lifting activity (tonnage), the power
consumption, and the temperature of the motor or hydraulic or other similar things. This project is created
based on the idea of proposing and building a crane monitoring system that can monitor and inspect the
crane’s health and utilization at any time using the mobile application. When the utilization percentage of the
crane and the health status of the crane are known, then future management, maintenance, and planning will
be able to be executed to prevent an unexpected event like crane shutting down or accidents that will cause a
delay to the working schedule.
ISSN: 2088-8708
Int J Elec & Comp Eng, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2023: 2223-2232
2224
Internet of things (IoT) had been implemented in various monitoring projects using different kinds
of wireless technologies and sensors [2][12]. Previous research show long range (LoRa) can operate at a
maximum distance of around 300 meters due to the types of antennas used in the projects, where normally a
good quality of LoRa antenna can reach up to a few kilometers of distances [13], [14]. Few researchers
focused on developing and improving the software part of the cranes monitoring system. Yoon et al. [15],
[16] conducted simulation testing to evaluate mobile crane lift operations using various software platforms.
Besides, the latest research proposed optimization of crane operation to improve the performance of cranes
[17][19]. While the other researchers are focusing on improving the LoRa protocol [20][23]. Carmona
et al. [24] developed a low-cost system for monitoring tower cranes using LoRa, however; the monitoring
system is controlled through a website where it has limitations in terms of mobility. Another project
developed by [25] proposed a wireless system to monitor and manage the tower crane to control the cranes
efficiently and safely. The data information of the crane will be detected by the sensors and general packet
radio services (GPRS) module is connected to the internet using UART RS485 to allow the data to be sent to
the remote terminal. In the end, the user will be able to monitor and supervise the tower crane’s operation via
the web platform. The drawbacks of this paper are the web interface is not user-friendly and complex to use.
Other than that, the general packet radio service (GPRS) module used in this project is not versatile
nowadays which will cause the connectivity problem when the network ping is high.
This paper presents the design and development of a crane monitoring system using LoRa
technology. This project is uniquely designed, developed, and targeted to be used in the shipbuilding and
heavy engineering industry. LoRa technology has been chosen for wireless connectivity due to its robustness
and wider coverage, suitable for wide-area locations for example dock ship areas. Compared to previous
research, an android application is created to enable the mobility concept of the monitoring system. The
developed application will ease the user to remotely monitor the crane’s operation anywhere and anytime.
2. METHOD
Figure 1 shows the block diagram of the system designed. There are two parts which are the
transmitter and receiver parts. The sensors will evoke when the crane starts to work. The value of sensors will
be sent to Arduino for processing before being passed to LoRa for transmission. The received data will be
sent to the designed database using a Wi-Fi connection from the NodeMCU ESP8266 internet module.
Finally, the user will be able to view and monitor the crane by running the developed application on the
mobile phone.
Figure 1. Crane monitoring system block diagram
Figure 2 shows the hardware setup for the transmitter side. In this project, ACS712 was used as the
current sensor where TS90a servo motor was connected to the sensor to act as the current sensor’s load; to
allow current data measurement. An Arduino Nano is used to supply power and program the servo motor to
rotate occasionally for every 15 seconds. Besides, the load cell sensor needs a load for measuring the weight
data. Thus, an object is added and placed on the load cell sensor to become the weight sensor load. There is
also a real time clock (RTC) module used to record the date and time for calculating crane utilization rate. An
HC-SR04 Ultrasonic sensor was used to detect the crane’s fuel consumption. DHT22 is used as the
temperature sensor for detecting any abnormality of the crane. The crane data mentioned in this project are
only simulation data, these data are not tested on the real crane, but the data type can be used to monitor the
real crane. For example, the temperature data in this project refers to the temperature of the crane, the weight
Int J Elec & Comp Eng ISSN: 2088-8708
Crane monitoring system based on internet of things using long range (Ng Wen Jun)
2225
data refers to the load of the crane, and data from the ultrasonic sensor refer to the fuel level of the crane. The
close-up figure for current and weight sensors and how there were connected is shown in Figure 3. As
mentioned earlier, the current sensor needs a load to show readings. Therefore, a servo motor is used to
mimic the real condition. In a real situation, the current sensor will be connected to the crane motor for
current measurement. The weight sensor used in this project can detect weight until 5 kg. A robust and
precise weight sensor needs to be used for measuring real crane data as it carries a bigger load. Figure 4
shows the receiver side of this project. The receiver side is simpler, it is consisting of a LoRa receiver being
connected to ESP8266 for Wi-Fi connections.
Figure 2. Transmitter side hardware setup
Figure 3. Current and weight sensor setup
ISSN: 2088-8708
Int J Elec & Comp Eng, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2023: 2223-2232
2226
Figure 4. Receiver side hardware setup
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this section, the output obtained from the project will be elaborated. This includes the sent and
received data through the LoRa transceiver. First, the data will be collected by the sensors on the transmitter
side. Then it will be transmitted and received by the LoRa module. Next, the data will be collected and
processed on the receiver side. The results will be divided into two sub-sections, the serial data results and
the results obtained from the application.
3.1. Results from serial monitor display
Figure 5 shows the display from the serial monitor of Arduino software when a transmitter sends
data dan Figure 6 shows the serial monitor from the Arduino software when a receiver receives data. The
measured items are current, power, temperature, weight, date and time, a distance that will be used to detect
the fuel oil in the crane, and total working time for the crane. In addition, the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and
received signal strength indication (RSSI) values of the LoRa module is also displayed in the serial monitor
of the receiver side. SNR and RSSI indicate the signal strength for LoRa.
Figure 5. Transmitter’s serials monitor display
Int J Elec & Comp Eng ISSN: 2088-8708
Crane monitoring system based on internet of things using long range (Ng Wen Jun)
2227
3.2. Results from database
The database has two parts, one is real-time data and another one is recorded data. The reason is due
to Google Firebases is a real-time database but not a structured query language (SQL) database. This means
that the data uploaded to the database is in unstructured format and hard to manage compared to SQL data. In
the first part, the real-time data will be shown and displayed in real-time but never recorded, while in the
second part the SQL database will record and save the data. The data is recorded every second and every
hour. Figure 7 shows the hourly view of Google firebase real-time database. By doing this, the data will be
able to be analyzed by applying different methods depending on user needs. In this project, the real-time data
will be shown directly with the value from the database. On the other hand, a graphical view will be used to
display both recorded seconds and hours data obtained from the database. The graph view will be displayed
in the android application.
Figure 7. Google firebase real-time database (hours view)
3.3. Results from the application
Figure 8 shows the initial page when a user launches the android application while Figure 9 shows
the response when the user clicks on the “Realtime monitoring” icon. To view the graph, the user will need to
click on the past record button. By default, there is no data when a user clicks on the past record buttons as in
Figure 10. This is due to no data was save previously. The date of the graph needs to be input by the user to
show the data in a graph view. On this page, the user will need to enter the date in a specific format and click
the “submit date” button. Besides that, there is a button labeled with the name “24H”, this button is used to
change the data mode between seconds or hours. The default data display mode is in seconds mode which
shows all the recorded data in seconds view, while another option is the hours mode which shows the data
recorded for each hour. This is useful for long-term analysis. Figure 11 shows the graph view after the date
was entered by the user in a specific format.
The user can change what sensor’s data they want to monitor by clicking on the spinner. Figure 12
shows the sensors option in the spinner. The available option for the user to monitor is current data, fuel data,
power data, temperature data, and weight data. The user can click on a specific measurement to view the
details. Besides that, the user able to zoom in and zoom out the graph for a better view experience. Zoom in
and out on the graph can be simply done by double-tapping the graph or zooming in out by dragging and
pinching the graph. Figure 13 shows the android application interface when the user zooms in on the graph
view and selected the temperature measurement. The graph in Figure 13 compared to the graph in Figure 12
is larger after zooming, as the latter one had been enlarged.
ISSN: 2088-8708
Int J Elec & Comp Eng, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2023: 2223-2232
2228
Figure 8. On launch interface
Figure 9. Display after icon “Realtime
monitoring” was clicked
Figure 10. Display after “Past Record” icon was
clicked
Figure 11. Display after data was entered in specific
format and “Submit Date” icon was clicked
Figure 14 shows the current data recorded in seconds between 12:00 to 12:00 p.m. on December 26,
2021. The current value starts with zero because at that time the load which is the servo motor has not yet
connected to the current sensor. But after a while, the servo motor starts to move periodically, so the current
value increase from zero to 0.05 ampere. Any abnormality from the crane can be observed by workers
directly from mobile at any time. Figure 15 is useful for long-term analysis for example to predict the
maintenance schedule. The figure shows the fuel data in per hour graph view. An ultrasonic sensor was used
to predict the fuel level in the crane. The ultrasonic sensor will detect the range by reading the reflection of
the signal. The power and temperature data were shown in Figures 16 and 17 subsequently. The power data
of a crane will tell the user how long the crane had been operated and should be stopped after a fixed
operating time. This action can help to extend the lifespan of the crane and make the maintenance schedule
Int J Elec & Comp Eng ISSN: 2088-8708
Crane monitoring system based on internet of things using long range (Ng Wen Jun)
2229
work easier. Besides that, the crane’s temperature is observed for its motor and hydraulic part. If the
temperature of the motor keeps increasing, it may cause the system of the crane to fail and stop working
normally. Figure 18 shows the weight data in the per hour graph view. In this project, 5 grams of load is
being used although the system able to detect up to 5 kg. The weight sensors allow the user to monitor and
control the maximum capacity that a crane can lift. Whenever a crane is overloaded, it causes irreversible
damage and may cause hazards. The most common case will be the drop of the load or crane is swinging and
hard to be controlled.
Figure 12. Spinner’s sensor option
Figure 13. Zoom in option
Figure 14. Current per second graph display
Figure 15. Fuel per hour graph display
ISSN: 2088-8708
Int J Elec & Comp Eng, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2023: 2223-2232
2230
Figure 16. Power per hour graph display
Figure 17. Temperature per hour graph display
Figure 18. Weight per hour graph display
4. CONCLUSION
In this project, a method had been proposed for implementing cranes utilization monitoring system
based on IoT using LoRa. By implementing the monitoring system, the crane can be monitored remotely via
smartphone. Few modifications can be done in the future, this includes putting some control on the
application for controlling the crane such as on and off buttons. This is needed during an emergency, where
Int J Elec & Comp Eng ISSN: 2088-8708
Crane monitoring system based on internet of things using long range (Ng Wen Jun)
2231
the user can be divided into many categories such that only the admin user has permission to interrupt the
crane activity. Besides that, the LoRa antenna can be changed to a more robust and durable one to suit the
heavy engineering outdoor environment.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Technology (FTKEE), Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), Malaysia; and those who give
energetic and full support in carrying out this research. This work was supported by the Ministry of Higher
Education (MoHE) Malaysia through the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) under Grant
FRGS/1/2020/TK0/UTEM/03/11.
REFERENCES
[1] A. R. A. Hamid et al., “Causes of crane accidents at construction sites in Malaysia,” IOP Conference Series: Earth and
Environmental Science, vol. 220, Feb. 2019, doi: 10.1088/1755-1315/220/1/012028.
[2] F. Kamaruddin, N. N. N. A. Malik, N. A. Murad, N. M. A. Latiff, S. K. S. Yusof, and S. A. Hamzah, “IoT-based intelligent
irrigation management and monitoring system using Arduino,” Telecommunication Computing Electronics and Control
(TELKOMNIKA), vol. 17, no. 5, Oct. 2019, doi: 10.12928/telkomnika.v17i5.12818.
[3] M. Rosmiati, M. F. Rizal, F. Susanti, and G. F. Alfisyahrin, “Air pollution monitoring system using LoRa modul as transceiver
system,” Telecommunication Computing Electronics and Control (TELKOMNIKA), vol. 17, no. 2, Apr. 2019, doi:
10.12928/telkomnika.v17i2.11760.
[4] M. F. M. Firdhous and B. H. Sudantha, “Cloud, IoT-powered smart weather station for microclimate monitoring,” Indonesian
Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (IJEECS), vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 508515, Jan. 2020, doi:
10.11591/ijeecs.v17.i1.pp508-515.
[5] O. B. M. Magtibay, R. H. Cabrera, J. P. Roxas, and M. A. De Vera, “Green switch: an IoT based energy monitoring system for
mabini building in De La Salle Lipa,” Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (IJEECS), vol. 24,
no. 2, pp. 754761, Nov. 2021, doi: 10.11591/ijeecs.v24.i2.pp754-761.
[6] A. Hadi and M. Z. Abdullah, “Web and IoT-based hospital location determination with criteria weight analysis,” Bulletin of
Electrical Engineering and Informatics (BEEI), vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 386395, Feb. 2022, doi: 10.11591/eei.v11i1.3214.
[7] H. Hudiono, M. Taufik, R. H. Y. Perdana, and A. E. Rakhmania, “Digital centralized water meter using 433 MHz LoRa,” Bulletin
of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 20622071, Aug. 2021, doi: 10.11591/eei.v10i4.2950.
[8] Z. Feng, “Research on water-saving irrigation automatic control system based on internet of things,” in 2011 International
Conference on Electric Information and Control Engineering, Apr. 2011, pp. 25412544, doi: 10.1109/ICEICE.2011.5778297.
[9] F. Idris, N. Hashim, A. F. Kadmin, and L. B. Yee, “Intelligent fire detection and alert system using labVIEW,” International
Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE), vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 18421849, Jun. 2019, doi:
10.11591/ijece.v9i3.pp1842-1849.
[10] N. Hashim, F. Idris, A. F. Kadmin, and S. S. J. Sidek, “Automatic traffic light controller for emergency vehicle using peripheral
interface controller,” International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE), vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 17881794, Jun.
2019, doi: 10.11591/ijece.v9i3.pp1788-1794.
[11] N. Hashim, M. A. H. A. Razak, and F. Idris, “Home security system using ZigBee,” Jurnal Teknologi, vol. 74, no. 10, Jun. 2015,
doi: 10.11113/jt.v74.4830.
[12] D. Croce, D. Garlisi, F. Giuliano, A. Lo Valvo, S. Mangione, and I. Tinnirello, “Performance of LoRa for bike-sharing systems,”
in 2019 AEIT International Conference of Electrical and Electronic Technologies for Automotive (AEIT AUTOMOTIVE), Jul.
2019, pp. 16, doi: 10.23919/EETA.2019.8804519.
[13] A. Zourmand, A. L. K. Hing, C. W. Hung, and M. A. Rehman, “Internet of things (IoT) using LoRa technology,” in 2019 IEEE
International Conference on Automatic Control and Intelligent Systems (I2CACIS), Jun. 2019, pp. 324330, doi:
10.1109/I2CACIS.2019.8825008.
[14] N. Hashim, F. Idris, T. N. A. T. Ab Aziz, S. H. Johari, R. M. Nor, and N. Ab Wahab, “Location tracking using LoRa,”
International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE), vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 31233128, Aug. 2021, doi:
10.11591/ijece.v11i4.pp3123-3128.
[15] B.-J. Yoon, K.-S. Lee, and J.-H. Lee, “Study on overturn proof monitoring system of mobile crane,” Applied Sciences, vol. 11, no.
15, Jul. 2021, doi: 10.3390/app11156819.
[16] S. Pooladvand, H. Taghaddos, A. Eslami, A. N. Tak, and U. (Rick) Hermann, “Evaluating mobile crane lift operations using an
interactive virtual reality s ystem,” Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, vol. 147, no. 11, Nov. 2021, doi:
10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0002177.
[17] H.-S. Gwak, H.-C. Lee, B.-Y. Choi, and Y. Mi, “GA-based optimization method for mobile crane repositioning route planning,”
Applied Sciences, vol. 11, no. 13, Jun. 2021, doi: 10.3390/app11136010.
[18] A. Mousaei, H. Taghaddos, A. N. Tak, S. Behzadipour, and U. Hermann, “Optimized mobile crane path planning in discretized
polar space,” Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, vol. 147, no. 5, May 2021, doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-
7862.0002033.
[19] L. Tan, H. Xie, G. Xiao, H. Tang, Y. Li, and H. Yang, “Optimization of valve plate applied in secondary unit and noise
reduction,” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science, vol.
236, no. 2, pp. 763777, Jan. 2022, doi: 10.1177/0954406221998405.
[20] Y. Hou, Z. Liu, and D. Sun, “A novel MAC protocol exploiting concurrent transmissions for massive LoRa connectivity,”
Journal of Communications and Networks, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 108117, Apr. 2020, doi: 10.1109/JCN.2020.000005.
[21] P. Edward, S. Elzeiny, M. Ashour, and T. Elshabrawy, “On the coexistence of LoRa- and interleaved chirp spreading LoRa-based
modulations,” in 2019 International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob),
Oct. 2019, pp. 16, doi: 10.1109/WiMOB.2019.8923211.
[22] R. Y. Azhari, E. Firmansyah, and A. Bejo, “Simple protocol design of multi-hop network in LoRa,” in 2019 International
Seminar on Research of Information Technology and Intelligent Systems (ISRITI), 2019, doi: 10.1109/isriti48646.2019.9034662.
ISSN: 2088-8708
Int J Elec & Comp Eng, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2023: 2223-2232
2232
[23] X. Wang, L. Kong, L. He, and G. Chen, “mLoRa: a multi-packet reception protocol in LoRa networks,” in 2019 IEEE 27th
International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), Oct. 2019, pp. 111, doi: 10.1109/ICNP.2019.8888038.
[24] A. M. Carmona et al., “A low-cost system for monitoring tower crane productivity cycles combining inertial measurement units,
load cells and lora networks,” in Advances in Informatics and Computing in Civil and Construction Engineering, Cham: Springer
International Publishing, 2019, pp. 677684.
[25] B. Li, G. Chen, L. Wang, and Z. Hao, “Tower crane remote wireless monitoring system based on modbus/Tcp prot ocol,” in 2017
IEEE International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) and IEEE International Conference on
Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC), Jul. 2017, pp. 187190, doi: 10.1109/CSE-EUC.2017.217.
BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS
Ng Wen Jun is a fourth-year computer system student at the Universiti Teknikal
Malaysia Melaka (UTeM). His interest includes computer programming and mechatronics. He
enjoys playing strategy games, learning, and exploring new things in his free time. He can be
contacted at email psplapsap@gmail.com.
Norlezah Hashim obtained her first degree in 2006 from the University of
Malaya (UM) and her master’s degree from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in 2014.
She is currently serving UTEM as a lecturer in the Faculty of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering Technology (FTKEE). The pervasiveness of bringing high-speed mobile internet
and IoT brings to light her work on 5G and beyond, focusing on Non-Orthogonal Multiple
Access (NOMA). Her current publications are also based on wireless communication and
LoRa technology. She can be contacted at email: norlezah@utem.edu.my.
Fakrulradzi Idris received received the B.Eng. and the M.Eng. Degrees from
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 2007 and 2008 respectively. He received the Ph.D. degree
from The University of Manchester, U.K in 2018. He is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of
Electronics and Computer Engineering (FKEKK), Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka
(UTeM). His research interests include Device-to-Device (D2D) communications,
Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA), and 5G networks. He can be contacted at email:
fakrulradzi@utem.edu.my.
Ida Syafiza received their Ph.D. degree from the University of Leeds, U.K., in
2020, and worked on energy efficient access networks design for healthcare applications. She
is currently a Senior Lecturer with Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), Malaysia.
She has published several articles in this area. Her research interests include network
architecture design, energy efficiency, network optimization, mixed integer linear
programming, and pt healthcare systems. She can be contacted at email:
idasyafiza@utem.edu.my.
Nurbahirah Norddin received her B. Eng degree in Electrical Engineering
(Power Electronics and Drives) in 2011 and M. Eng in Electrical Engineering from Universiti
Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) in 2014. Currently, she is a lecturer at UTeM, and her
interest involves high voltage and signal processing. She can be contacted at email:
nurbahirah@utem.edu.my.
... The COVID-19 pandemic has expedited the development of telemedicine and digital health systems, which have altered the way healthcare is delivered by enabling remote consultations, monitoring, and improved patient participation [1]. The Internet of Things (IoT) enable people to build a network of linked devices that could improve productivity, convenience, and data-driven decision-making in a wide range of businesses [2,3]. The Internet of Things (IoT) also offers new opportunities for healthcare professionals to monitor patients, as well as for patients to monitor themselves [4][5][6]. ...
Article
Managing the healthcare system presents various challenges that healthcare professionals must be well-prepared to address. Additionally, in times of pandemics, reducing human contact in crowded locations like clinics becomes crucial. Currently, many clinic departments spend a considerable amount of time manually entering and searching for patient data within their systems. This process is not only time-consuming but also notably ineffective. Hence, the development of a mobile application has become an imperative solution to overcome these issues. This project has been implemented using Android Studio with the primary aim of tracking patient health and efficiently recording patient data. This, enables doctors to effectively monitor their patients. The developed application serves as a two-way communication bridge between patients and healthcare departments. Patients can effortlessly schedule appointments with their doctors for consultations and update their health status through the app. Simultaneously, doctors can conveniently issue prescriptions via the same application. We conducted a survey involving 120 participants, comprising 20 doctors and 100 patients. The results unequivocally demonstrate that the designed application has significantly improved healthcare management and fostered efficient communication between doctors and patients.
Article
Full-text available
A cost-effective IoT-based real-time data acquisition and analysis hardware system was developed to enhance the performance of the mobile harbor cranes using a combination of a cost-effective quality control monitoring sensor dashboard (proximity sensors, angle position sensor, weight sensor, vibration sensor, and wind sensor), embedded microcontroller (Arduino), and embedded computer (Raspberry Pi). Hardware was operated using a specially developed novel Quality Control and Data Acquisition Multiprocessing software (QC-DAS). The QC-DAS can automatically collect and save real-time data of the sensors in a large-capacity SD card, monitor the state of health of the hardware, and transmit the real-time data of the sensors and the working state of the crane to an IoT server. The novelty of the QC-DAS design is that each function is encapsulated in a predefined module that is "immersed" in a message transmission medium. Modules interact by sending and receiving various signals through this medium. Modularity makes system design simpler, faster, and flexible. Thanks to modularity, users may incorporate their data processing modules when new sensors are added to match the system's needs. Thanks to modularity the DC-DAS can operate quality control hardware for any mobile cranes. There are several constraints in the quality control data acquisition system used by the Damietta Port Authority in Damietta, Egypt, SESCO TRANS company which cause the loading and unloading process to be slowed down. As a result, the SESCO TRANS company upgraded its quality control data acquisition system using the QC-DAS. The hardware was deployed for six months, during which the collected data was used to verify the crane's performance. The vibration produced by the slewing of the crane was monitored and compared with the bearing fault frequency limits, during the operation the wind speed was monitored and compared with the critical wind speed to stop the crane operation automatically, and the payloads data of the six months was collected and was used to calculate the working efficiency of the load and unload process of the crane. The results demonstrated that while maintenance costs were decreased, the crane load/unload procedure was improved. The SESCO TRANS company crane operators approved the developed approach and appreciated the achieved results.
Article
Full-text available
p> Adoption of the internet of things (IoT) is moving forward quickly because of the developments in communication protocols and technology involving sensors. The IoT is promoting real-time agricultural field monitoring from any distant place. For the IoT to be implemented effectively there are a number of agricultural issues related to less power usage and long-distance transfer of data are to be addressed. By using LoRa, which is a wireless communication system for IoT applications, these difficulties can be avoided when sending information from fields of crops to a web server. Acustomized sensor node and LoRa are used in this work to transmit continuously updated information to a remote server. Monitoring the quality of water, and reducing wasteful use of water are the main goals. </p
Article
Full-text available
The hospital location selection for COVID-19-infected patients is out to be one of the most critical decisions for healthcare sectors in high-case countries. In this study, optimal urban hospital location selection for COVID-19-infected patients has been done out of multiple alternative locations in city of Baghdad Iraq by introducing a web application system that can find the best site from alternatives by using MEREC and modified technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) algorithms. MEREC algorithm is utilized to obtain criteria weights and modified TOPSIS for ranking the alternatives. Four criteria are considered with eight alternatives sites. The proposed system has two-part, hardware part (embedded systems) designed by utilizing NEO-6M GPS receiver with ESP8266NodeMCU to obtain coordinate of regions and then, using the HTTP protocol to communicate to submit these data to database server. The second part is the web application developed by PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and MySQL used to allow the system admin to enter the locations of the alternatives with their criteria into the system to get the best urban hospital location for COVID-19-patients. The results showed effectiveness of overall suggested system and appropriateness of the modified TOPSIS method over the traditional TOPSIS method in ranking the alternative.
Article
Full-text available
p>Building energy management systems (BEMS) are critical tools for managing and controlling a facility's technical systems and services, such as lighting, ventilation, heating, and air conditioning, to ensure that the building operates at peak efficiency while decreasing energy waste. The Mabini Building at De La Salle Lipa has nearly a hundred rooms, 70 of which are used by college students for lecture and laboratory classes. From 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., these rooms are available. In a daily class schedule, air conditioning units and lights are used an average of 10 hours per day, while fans and power outlets are used an average of 5 hours. Even when no classes are being held, the aforementioned equipment is frequently left open in these rooms. The researchers created and constructed an IoT-based energy monitoring system to monitor and control the lights and outlets in a room. The system will also record the number of kilowatt-hours (kWh) consumed. The system employs NodeMCU, current, and voltage sensors, a Raspberry Pi 3, and the school's existing network to send and receive data from the server. The building administrator will use the collected data to give consumption statistics and reduce the carbon footprint.</p
Article
Full-text available
The local water supply corporation in Indonesia only uses analog water meter so that the monitoring of water usage information was conducted by officers manually. Officers must physically monitor the value in the customer's water meter that can lead to unreliable reading and ineffectiveness of process. Smart meter is one of the smart city metrics which could overcome this problem. This research uses the flow sensor to design and incorporate automated water meters. The measured value is then passed via the 433 MHz LoRa, a low-power wide-area network protocol, to the local hub, then forwarded to the server via the internet based cellular network. Results show that our proposed system's accuracy hit 97.31% at an ideal distance of 200 meters from customer to the local hub. The customer's water usage could be tracked in real time with our proposed system. Furthermore, the original water meter need not to be replaced which may minimize capital costs for this system.
Article
Full-text available
span>Local area network (LAN) as Bluetooth, WiFi and ZigBee are well established technology. The biggest problem with many LAN is the battery consumption and short ranges link budgets. LoRa is a new, private, unlicensed and spread spectrum modulation technique which allows sending low rates at extremely long ranges with minimal power consumption. More importantly, there is no access fee associated with this type of wireless technology. The main idea behind this work is to conduct performance and capability analysis of a currently available LoRa transceiver. We develop a location monitoring system using LoRa and global positioning system (GPS) module and we analyze the detectable range of its data, its battery consumption as well as received signal strength indicator (RSSI). Our deployment experiment demonstrates that the sy stem is able to detect the transmitted data within 290 meters of distances. Using 6 volts of battery AA, the transmission of data still occurred after 24 hours . This project is emphasized a location monitoring system that provide low power usage but long range.</span
Article
Full-text available
While up-right build structures are under construction, an over-hung crane has a major role in efficient lifting and transporting heavy materials from one point to another. There are several types of cranes for a variety of construction sites, such as bridge/overhead, barge lift, tower crane, etc. The mobile crane is one of the most widely used types of construction equipment due to its mobility. Unfortunately, the number of crane accidents including casualties and deaths has increased over the last decade. In order to reduce these fatal tragedies, a dynamic simulator of mobile cranes based on analyzed overturn limit data has been developed and analysis results have been applied to site tests. The test bench is formulated to simulate the actual construction field and some practical experiments have been performed in realistic manners of operation. Moreover, wireless network communication systems are applied for monitoring the status of the crane from a distance where visibility is not secure. Consequently, the applicability in the field derived from operating the simulator and actual vehicle testing confirmed the feasibility of applying it to construction sites.
Article
Full-text available
Mobile cranes have been used extensively as essential equipment at construction sites. The productivity improvement of the mobile crane affects the overall productivity of the construction project. Hence, various studies have been conducted regarding mobile crane operation planning. However, studies on solving RCP (the repositioning mobile crane problem) are insufficient. This article presents a mobile crane reposition route planning optimization method (RPOS) that minimizes the total operating time of mobile crane. It converts the construction site into a mathematical model, determines feasible locations of the mobile crane, and identifies near-global optimal solution (s) (i.e., the placement point sequences of mobile crane) by implementing genetic algorithm and dijkstra’s algorithm. The study is of value to practitioners because RPOS provides an easy-to-use computerized tool that reduces the lengthy computations relative to data processing and Genetic Algorithms (GAs). Test cases verify the validity of the computational method.
Article
Full-text available
Among variant low-power wide area networks (LPWAN), LoRa is one of the most promising and is extensively deployed worldwide because of its satisfactory performance and relatively low cost. In the foreseen future, various internet of things (IoT) applications are required to sustain connectivity for massive end-devices. Massive connectivity challenges the LoRaWAN network based on ALOHA medium access control (MAC) protocol due to severe collisions under high traffic loads. To solve this problem, we first dissect the principles and characteristics of LoRa physical layer. And it suggests that the capture effect among the signals with the same spreading factor (SF) and different SFs can be adequately leveraged to improve performance. Based on the capture effect, we develop a new receiver structure that enables the superposed LoRa signals with different odd/even SFs to be demodulated simultaneously. A suitable novel MAC protocol exploiting such concurrent transmissions is further presented. Simulations verify that, through utilizing the capture effect, the proposed protocol can partly tackle the collisions due to numerous access attempts, which results in enhancing the throughput compared to LoRaWAN. These results show that the proposed scheme is compliant with the requirement of IoT applications with massive connectivity.
Article
Secondary unit, in term of application, is the combination of pump and motor, the valve plate specifically designed for pump or motor may not be suitable for a secondary unit. This paper mainly discusses design of valve plate of secondary unit applied in mobile crane, several critical points needed to be noticed during design have been discussed, furthermore, by adopting the proposed method to optimize a valve plate, which originates from closed-loop pump and now is used in opened-loop system, noise reduction was realized. Firstly, 1D simulation models, including pump condition and motor condition, were established in AMESim to obtain cylinder pressure, flow ripple and other critical parameters; secondly, by using Pumplinx, 3D numerical simulation was conducted to evaluate the cavitation risk; finally, a test bed was set up to validate the simulation result. Simulation result agreed well with the tested one. Both of them verified practicability of the proposed method. This research may provide a guidance for engineers and scholars who are interested in pump and motor.
Article
This paper presents a crane simulator system developed in the virtual reality (VR) environment integrated with a database of comprehensive lift studies and a detailed crane path planning system. This interactive system evaluates the lift operation quantitatively in real time in terms of its safety and practicability for the entire operation (entire lift path). The developed system can be employed in practice by crane operators and lift engineers for various objectives, including gaining hands-on experience before the actual operation, enhancing engineered lift planning, increasing workplace awareness, and evaluating and mitigating lift-related risks. The proposed framework is validated through two scenarios in a modular construction project in Alberta, Canada.
Article
Improper planning and management of heavy lifts is a major cause of cost overruns, delays, and, more importantly, safety incidents in industrial megaprojects. Automated lift planning is widely acknowledged as an effective solution. This research presents an automated lift path planning system for mobile cranes leveraging space discretization and an obstacle-avoidance technique from robotics. The proposed method treats the lifted object as a three-degree-of-freedom convex traveling through the surrounding environment [a given two-dimensional (2D) elevation] with discretized rotational and translational motions in polar coordinates. It efficiently finds the best feasible pick location and optimized collision-free lift path in the polar coordinate system to the set location. This system is a state-of-the art advancement in crane path planning because it mimics the crane’s intrinsic behavior and generates paths considering cost functions for safety, practicality, and economic objectives to enable its implementation in real practice settings. Illustrative examples are presented to verify the proposed approach and demonstrate its superiority over past similar path planning systems in terms of optimality and operational ease.