Unit – 03 (Sensors and Hardware for IoT)

LAKSHYA POLYTECHNIC
PLAN. EXECUTE. ACHIEVE
UNIT – 03
Sensors and Hardware for IoT
Sensors
• Sensors are devices that convert a physical quantity into corresponding
voltage.
• Sensors are devices that when exposed to a physical phenomenon
(temperature, displacement, force etc.) produces a proportional output
signal (electrical, mechanical, magnetic etc.).
• The term transducer is often used with sensors. Sensor is a device that
responds to the change in the physical phenomenon whereas the
transducer is a device that converts one form to energy into another.

Characteristics of Sensors

[1]. Range:
It is the minimum and maximum value of physical variable that the sensor
can sense or measure. For example, a Resistance Temperature
Detector (RTD) for the measurement of temperature has a range of -200 to
800oC.
[2]. Span:
It is the difference between the maximum and minimum values of input. In
above example, the span of RTD is 800 – (-200) = 1000oC.
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[3]. Accuracy:
The error in measurement is specified in terms of accuracy. It is defined as
the difference between measured value and true value. It is defined in terms
of % of full scale or % of reading.

Xt is calculated by taking mean of infinite number of measurements.

[4]. Precision:
It is defined as the closeness among a set of values. It is different from
accuracy.
Let Xt be the true value of the variable X and a random experiment measures
X1, X2, …. Xi as the value of X.
We will say our measurements X1, X2,… Xi are precise when they are very near
to each other but not necessarily close to true value Xt.
However, if we say X1, X2,… Xi are accurate, it means that they are close to
true value Xt and hence they are also close to each other. Hence accurate
measurements are always precise.
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[5]. Sensitivity:
It is the ratio of change in output to change in input. If Y be the output
quantity in response to input X, then sensitivity S can be expressed as

[6]. Linearity:
Linearity is the maximum deviation between the measured values of a
sensor from ideal curve.

[7]. Hysteresis:
It is the difference in output when input is varied in two ways- increasing and
decreasing. 3

[8]. Resolution:
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It is the minimum change in input that can be sensed by the sensor.

[9]. Reproducibility:
It is defined as the ability of sensor to produce the same output when same
input is applied.
[10]. Repeatability:
It is defined as the ability of sensor to produce the same output every time
when the same input is applied and all the physical and measurement
conditions kept the same including the operator, instrument, ambient
conditions etc.
[11]. Response Time:
It is generally expressed as the time at which the output reaches a certain
percentage (for instance, 95%) of its final value, in response to a step change
of the input.

Classification of sensors

Sensors can be ranked into various classification systems, but for the sake of
simplification, we have divided them into 5 core classifications.

1. Active and Passive Sensors

o Active Sensors (also known as parametric sensors) are sensors that require
an external power source to operate. Examples of active sensors include GPS
sensors and radar sensors.

o Passive Sensors (also called self-generated sensors) generate their own

electric signal and do not require any external power source. Examples of
passive sensors include thermal sensors, electric field sensing, and metal
detecting.

2. Contact and Non-Contact Sensors

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o Contact Sensors are those that require physical contact with their stimulus.
Familiar examples of contact sensors are temperature and strain gauge
sensors.

o Non-Contact Sensors, on the other hand, require no physical contact. These

types of sensors include optical and magnetic sensors, as well as infrared
thermometers.

3. Absolute and Relative Sensors

o Absolute Sensors mimic its name by providing an absolute reading of its

stimulus. For example, a thermistor always measures the exact, or absolute,
temperature reading.

o Relative Sensors provide measurement to a fixed or variable measurement.

An example of a relative sensor would be a thermocouple, where the
temperature difference is measured, not the actual temperature.

4. Analog and Digital Sensors

o Analog Sensors produce continuous analog output signals, proportional to

its measurement. A few examples of analog sensors are: accelerometers,
pressure sensors, light, and sound sensors.

o Digital Sensors (also known as electronic or electrochemical sensors) convert

the data transmission, digitally. Examples include digital accelerometers,
pressure, and temperature sensors.
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Common types of sensors used in IoT

1) Temperature Sensor

• One of the most common and most popular sensors is the Temperature
Sensor. A Temperature Sensor, as the name suggests, senses the
temperature i.e., it measures the changes in the temperature.

• There are different types of Temperature Sensors like Temperature

Sensor ICs (like LM35, DS18B20), Thermistors, Thermocouples, RTD
(Resistive Temperature Devices), etc.

• Temperature Sensors can be analog or digital. In an Analog Temperature

Sensor, the changes in the Temperature correspond to change in its
physical property like resistance or voltage. LM35 is a classic Analog
Temperature Sensor.

• Coming to the Digital Temperature Sensor, the output is a discrete digital

value (usually, some numerical data after converting analog value to
digital value). DS18B20 is a simple Digital Temperature Sensor.

2) Proximity Sensors
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• Proximity Sensor is a non-contact type sensor that detects the presence

of an object. Proximity Sensors can be implemented using different
techniques like Optical (like Infrared or Laser), Sound (Ultrasonic),
Magnetic (Hall Effect), Capacitive, etc.

• Some of the applications of Proximity Sensors are Mobile Phones, Cars

(Parking Sensors), industries (object alignment), Ground Proximity in
Aircrafts, etc.

3) Infrared Sensor (IR Sensor)

• IR Sensors or Infrared Sensor are light based sensor that are used in
various applications like Proximity and Object Detection. IR Sensors are
used as proximity sensors in almost all mobile phones.

• There are two types of Infra-red or IR Sensors: Transmissive Type and

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Reflective Type. In Transmissive Type IR Sensor, the IR Transmitter

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(usually an IR LED) and the IR Detector (usually a Photo Diode) are

positioned facing each other so that when an object passes between
them, the sensor detects the object.

• The other type of IR Sensor is a Reflective Type IR Sensor. In this, the

transmitter and the detector are positioned adjacent to each other facing
the object. When an object comes in front of the sensor, the infrared light
from the IR Transmitter is reflected from the object and is detected by the
IR Receiver and thus the sensor detects the object.

• Different applications where IR Sensor is implemented are Mobile

Phones, Robots, Industrial assembly, automobiles etc.

4) Ultrasonic Sensor

• An Ultrasonic Sensor is a non-contact type device that can be used to

measure distance as well as velocity of an object. An Ultrasonic Sensor
works based on the properties of the sound waves with frequency greater
than that of the human audible range.

• Using the time of flight of the sound wave, an Ultrasonic Sensor can
measure the distance of the object (similar to SONAR). The Doppler Shift
property of the sound wave is used to measure the velocity of an object.

5) Light Sensor
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• Sometimes also known as Photo Sensors, Light Sensors are one of the
important sensors.

• A simple Light Sensor available today is the Light Dependent Resistor or

LDR. The property of LDR is that its resistance is inversely proportional to
the intensity of the ambient light i.e., when the intensity of light increases,
its resistance decreases and vice-versa.

• By using LDR is a circuit, we can calibrate the changes in its resistance to

measure the intensity of Light.

• There are two other Light Sensors (or Photo Sensors) which are often used
in complex electronic system design. They are Photo Diode and Photo
Transistor. All these are Analog Sensors.

• There are also Digital Light Sensors like BH1750, TSL2561, etc., which can
calculate intensity of light and provide a digital equivalent value.

6) Smoke and Gas Sensors

• One of the very useful sensors in safety related applications are Smoke
and Gas Sensors. Almost all offices and industries are equipped with
several smoke detectors, which detect any smoke (due to fire) and sound
an alarm.
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• Gas Sensors are more common in laboratories, large scale kitchens and
industries. They can detect different gases like LPG, Propane, Butane,
Methane (CH4), etc.

• Now-a-days, smoke sensors (which often can detect smoke as well gas)
are also installed in most homes as a safety measure.

• The “MQ” series of sensors are a bunch of cheap sensors for detecting CO,
CO2, CH4, Alcohol, Propane, Butane, LPG etc. You can use these sensors
to build your own Smoke Sensor Application.

7) Alcohol Sensor

• As the name suggests, an Alcohol Sensor detects alcohol. Usually, alcohol

sensors are used in Breathalyzer devices, which determine whether a
person is drunk or not. Law enforcement personnel uses breathalysers to
catch drunk-and-drive culprits.
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8) Touch Sensor

• Touch Sensors, as the name suggests, detect touch of a finger or a stylus.

Often touch sensors are classified into Resistive and Capacitive type.

• Almost all modern touch sensors are of Capacitive Types as they are more
accurate and have better signal to noise ratio.

9) Colour Sensor

• A Colour Sensor is a useful device in building colour sensing applications

in the field of image processing, colour identification, industrial object
tracking etc.

• The TCS3200 is a simple Colour Sensor, which can detect any colour and
output a square wave proportional to the wavelength of the detected
colour.

10) Humidity Sensor

• Measuring humidity is an important task in many applications and

Humidity Sensors help us in achieving this.

• Often all humidity sensors measure relative humidity (a ratio of water

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content in air to maximum potential of air to hold water). Since relative

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humidity is dependent on temperature of air, almost all Humidity Sensors

can also measure Temperature.

• Humidity Sensors are classified into Capacitive Type, Resistive Type and
Thermal Conductive Type. DHT11 and DHT22 are two of the frequently
used Humidity Sensors in DIY Community (the former is a resistive type
while the latter is capacitive type).

11) Tilt Sensor

• Often used to detect inclination or orientation, Tilt Sensors are one of the
simplest and inexpensive sensors out there. Previously, tilt sensors are
made up of Mercury (and hence they are sometimes called as Mercury
Switches) but most modern tilt sensors contain a roller ball.

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Development Boards
A development board is a printed circuit board with circuitry and hardware
designed to assist experimentation with a certain microcontroller.

Why Development Boards are needed?

• IoT development boards allow for easy integration of the IoT device into
tech stack.

• Knowing how to choose the right microcontroller or microprocessor is

essential for development, and utilizing a readily available development
kit can accelerate the process even more.

• IoT development boards allow for tinkering and easy access to I/O pins to
build custom circuitry and easily develop firmware.

• In short, to make the engineers’ life easier and more efficient with
prototyping development boards are constructed.

Typical components of a development board

• Power circuit– Generally set up to run off of a 9V power supply

• Programming interface– Let you program the microcontroller from a

computer

• Basic input – Usually buttons

• Basic output– Usually LEDs

• I/O pins– Used for motors, temperature sensors, LCD screens, etc.
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Key Features that Decide the Selection of Development Board

Any development board you consider for an IoT project must include a few
important features. Those are:

Processing power.

This could be in the form of a CPU, microcontroller, FPGA, or other CPLD. A

microcontroller comes in handy for programming your device as many
manufacturers provide the IDE you need.

Wireless capabilities.

This feature provides wireless communication without including an external

transceiver module. Some of the common protocols include Bluetooth, Zigbee,
WiFi, and others.

Scalability.

This particular feature allows one to add more functionality to the development
board? You may verify if the board communicates via GPIO, UART, SPI, or some
other protocol; As this will determine how the board interacts with other
devices.

Memory.

Board memory is important. To store much data, you need built-in Flash
memory. A decent board allows connecting a MiniSD or MicroSD card to
enhance data storage.
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Some Popular IoT development Boards

There are several IoT prototyping boards in the market with different
specifications.

1. Raspberry Pi

➢ The raspberry pi Development Board is a small credit card size computer.

➢ It works on Linux based operating systems and is good for embedded

projects.

➢ Raspberry boards can be easily plugged in to your monitor, computer or

TV.

➢ It uses a standard keyboard and mouse.

➢ Even amateur users depend on it for configuring their digital media

systems and surveillance cameras.

Features :

• Processor: 1.2GHz, 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU

• 802.11n Wireless LAN

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• Bluetooth 4.1
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• Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)

• 1GB RAM

• 4 USB ports

• 40 GPIO pins

• Full HDMI port

• Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video

• Camera interface (CSI)

• Display interface (DSI)

• Micro SD card slot

• videoCore IV 3D graphics core

2. Jetson Nano

➢ Jetson Nano is a power-efficient and low-cost development board.

➢ Provides total performance to run modern AI workloads in a small form

factor.

➢ Additionally, it has the ability for heavy workload applications like image
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classification, object detection, segmentation, and speech processing.

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➢ It is capable to run multiple neural network apps at the same time.

Features:

• GPU: 128-core NVIDIA Maxwell™ architecture-based GPU.

• CPU: Quad-core ARM® A57.

• Video: 4K @ 30 fps

• Camera: 1/3″ AR0330 CMOS Image sensor with 2.2 µm pixel.

• Memory: 4 GB 64-bit LPDDR4; 25.6 gigabytes/second.

• Connectivity: Gigabit Ethernet.

• OS Support: Linux for Tegra®.

4. ESP 32

➢ ESP32 is a dual core low-footprint system development board powered

by the latest ESP-WROOM-32 module that can be easily placed into a
solderless breadboard.

➢ It has a pre-integrated antenna, power amplifier, low-noise amplifiers,

filters, and power management module.

➢ Because of this, it’s easy to build and test circuits as well as making
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projects related to IoT integrating with the cloud platform.

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Features :

• 2.4 GHz dual-mode Wi-Fi.

• Programmable with Arduino open-source IDE.

• 8 independent LED.

• Bluetooth chips by TSMC.

• 40nm low power technology, power, and RF.

• Easily embedded with other products.

• Strong function with support LWIP protocol.

• Supporting the Lua program, easily to develop.

4. Banana Pi

➢ Banana Pi is a line of low-cost credit card-sized single-board computers

(SBC).

➢ It is a router-based development board, which efficiently runs on various

open-source operating systems including Open WRT and Android,
Lubuntu, Ubuntu, Debian, and Raspbian.
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➢ Well, the hardware design of banana pi was influenced by the Raspberry

Pi and it is compatible with Raspberry Pi boards.

Features :

• All winner A20 Dual-core 1.0 GHz CPU

• Mali-400 MP2 with Open GL ES 2.0/1.1.

• 1 GB DDR3 memory.

• 1x Gigabit LAN

• 1x SATA interface.

• 1X MIC

• 1x USB otg and 2x USB 2.0

• HDMI out

• Composite video out

• CSI camera interface

• DSI display interface

• 26 PIN GPIO

5. Arduino Nano 33 IoT

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➢ The Arduino Nano 33 IoT is a dual-processor device that is perfect for

experimentation.

➢ It offers a practical and low-cost solution for inventors seeking to add Wi-
Fi connectivity to their projects with minimal previous experience in
networking.

➢ The board is compatible with the Arduino IoT Cloud, where you can create
IoT applications in a few simple steps

Features :

• ARM Cortex-M0 32-bit SAMD21 processor

• 14 digital I/O pins and 8 analog input pins

• Support up to 12-bit ADC/PWM and 10-bit DAC resolutions.

• Can operate as a few different USB devices: (asynchronous

serial, keyboard or mouse) also referred as HID, and USB MIDI.

• Can communicate via Synchronous serial communications.

• Inbuilt real-time clock module.

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Basics of Wireless Networks

A network is two or more devices connected together using a

telecommunication system for the purpose of communicating and sharing
resources
Type of Networks
A. PAN: A personal area network is a computer network (CN) used for
communication among computer devices (including telephones and personal
digital assistants) close to one person
Technologies: USB and Firewire (wired), and Bluetooth (wireless)
B. LAN: A local area network is a CN covering a small geographic area, like a
home, office, or group of buildings
Technologies: Ethernet (wired) or Wi-Fi (wireless)
C. MAN: Metropolitan Area Networks are large CNs usually spanning a city
Technologies: Ethernet (wired) or WiMAX (wireless)
D. WAN: Wide Area Network is a CN that covers a broad area, e.g., cross
metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries
Examples: Internet
Wireless Technologies: HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, GSM.

A generic structure of Network

[1]. Physical layer: conversion of stream of bits into signals – carrier
generation - frequency selection– signal detection – encryption
[2]. Data link layer: accessing the medium – multiplexing - error correction –
synchronization
[3]. Network layer: routing packets – addressing -handover between
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networks
 Unit – 03 (Sensors and Hardware for IoT)

[4]. Transport layer: establish an end-to-end connection – quality of service –

flow and congestion control
[5]. Application layer: service location – support multimedia – wireless access
to www

Wireless Network
• The difference between wired and wireless is the physical layer and the
data link layer Wired network technology is based on wires or fibres
• Data transmission in wireless networks take place using electromagnetic
waves which propagates through space (scattered, reflected, attenuated)
• Data are modulated onto carrier frequencies (amplitude, frequency)
• The data link layer (accessing the medium, multiplexing, error correction,
synchronization) requires more complex mechanisms.
IEEE standard 802.11

CSMA/CA
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CSMA/CD

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Node MCU
➢ NodeMCU is an open-source LUA (A light weight programming language)
based firmware developed for the ESP8266 wifi chip.

➢ NodeMCU firmware comes with the ESP8266 Development board/kit i.e.,

NodeMCU Development board.

➢ Since NodeMCU is an open-source platform, its hardware design is open

for edit/modify/build.

➢ NodeMCU Dev Kit/board consist of ESP8266 wifi enabled chip.

➢ ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi chip developed by Espressif Systems with

TCP/IP protocol.

➢ There is Version2 (V2) available for NodeMCU Dev Kit i.e., NodeMCU
Development Board v1.0 (Version2), which usually comes in black
coloured PCB.
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Features of NodeMCU
• Microcontroller: Tensilica 32-bit RISC CPU Xtensa LX106
• Operating Voltage: 3.3V
• Input Voltage: 7-12V
• Digital I/O Pins (DIO): 16
• Analog Input Pins (ADC): 1
• UARTs: 1
• SPIs: 1
• I2Cs: 1
• Flash Memory: 4 MB
• SRAM: 64 KB
• Clock Speed: 80 MHz
• USB-TTL based on CP2102 is included onboard, Enabling Plug n Play
• PCB Antenna
• Small Sized module to fit smartly inside your IoT projects
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NodeMCU Development Board Pinout Configuration

Pin Category Name Description
Power Micro- Micro-USB: NodeMCU can be powered through the
USB, USB port
3.3V, 3.3V: Regulated 3.3V can be supplied to this pin to
GND, power the board
Vin GND: Ground pins
Vin: External Power Supply
Control Pins EN, RST The pin and the button reset the microcontroller
Analog Pin A0 Used to measure analog voltage in the range of 0-
3.3V
GPIO Pins GPIO1 to NodeMCU has 16 general purpose input-output
GPIO16 pins on its board
SPI Pins SD1, NodeMCU has four pins available for SPI
(serial CMD, communication.
peripheral SD0, CLK
interface)
UART Pins TXD0, NodeMCU has two UART interfaces, UART0 (RXD0
(universal RXD0, & TXD0) and UART1 (RXD1 & TXD1). UART1 is used
asynchronous TXD2, to upload the firmware/program.
receiver- RXD2
transmitter)
I2C Pins NodeMCU has I2C functionality support but due to
(Inter- the internal functionality of these pins, you have to
Integrated find which pin is I2C.
Circuit.)
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