LoRa Smart City Box

Background

With the introduction of a LoraWan network in Novi Sad, we wanted to utilize it to make a smart-city project that would be helpful to as many people as possible and would be at least a bit useful.

Note: What Lora is and how it works is a complicated subject, and I won't even try to explain it in this post. If you are interested or want to figure it out here are some resources.

https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/

https://www.semtech.com/technology/lora/what-is-lora

Project Description

The concept of our idea is city wide tracking of important data (for now we have temperature, humidity and CO2 concentration tracking and we are working on public bus tracking and traffic flow) using small compact boxes with sensors attached to buses and taxis which would give us coverage of the city.

The ESP gathers data and sends them in packages via TTN (The things network). Afterwards the website Javascript code organizes that data into a database and uses it to make a nice presentation. Although the code is working on any mobile device we are planing an android app to make mobile viewing much easier.

The Future

We are planning to add real-time bus tracking with an interactive map which would help people with timing and catching buses, and we are also planing to add traffic flow monitoring.

But the priority right now is making a nice case for the box which we would test on several buses and taxis across town. We are also working on a shield for the ESP that can be seen on the picture which would help with the size of the case and help with the removal of jumper wires.

Another thing that we are working on right now is a simple Android app for easier viewing on the move.

Overall we have plenty ideas on how to improve our project and our city and we will be working on expanding our project so that it would be useful to as many as possible.