Embedded Web Server Application Based

Automation and Monitoring System

Deepak C.Karia, Vispi Adajania, Manisha Agrawal and Swapnil Dandekar

Sardar Patel Institute of Technology

University of Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

deepakckaria@gmail.com, vispi_adajania@yahoo.co.in, manisha.ag13@gmail.com,

mailme.swapnil_dandekar@rediffmail.com

Abstract— Current Home Automation and Process

Monitoring Systems make use of PC–based servers. The

Appliances in case of Home Automation and processes in

case of Process Monitoring System are interfaced to

these servers. As a result, it becomes necessary to keep

the servers on all the time, which ultimately increases

the producing cost. This shortcoming can be overcome

by using an Embedded Web Server in place of a PC-

based Server. Embedded Web Server is a single-chip

implementation of the Ethernet networking standard.

By embedding Ethernet onto a device, it has the

capability to communicate via Ethernet without using a

computer. The server enables Web access to the

automation and monitoring system and provides a

scalable networking solution that is optimized for

instrumentation, industrial and home automation. The

users can browse the home page of the system using web

browser, and control the household appliances and

enquire about their operational status. This paper

proposes a development of such a low-cost electronic

prototype, which is designed for monitoring and

controlling home appliances via web browser. At the

same time, users can monitor the security situation at

home in real-time through different sensors installed at

home.

Keywords- Embedded web server, automation,

monitoring.

I. INTRODUCTION

As the world gets more and more technologically advanced,

we find new technology coming in deeper and deeper into

our personal lives even at home. Home automation [1] is

becoming more and more popular around the world and is

becoming a common practice. The process of home

automation works by making everything in the house

automatically controlled using technology to control and do

the jobs that we would normally do manually. Web enabled

systems offer great promise to education and science,

businesses and consumers. Some of their well known

benefits are listed below:

• Reduction of production cost due to remote monitoring,

diagnostics, debugging and upgrading firmware [2]

• Virtual educational laboratories for distance learning that

provide flexible schedules and create new educational

opportunities at a limited cost. [3]

• Convenience and safety that comes with the ability to

monitor the status of a smart home and to control Internet

appliances when away from home. [2]

A web server is a system which hosts a web site and

provides services for any requesting clients. The general

purpose web servers compose of an operating system, the

web pages or the application and a huge amount of memory

and sometimes a special hardware. The central function unit

to get access on an embedded system via Web browser is

the Web server. Such Web servers bring the desired HTML

pages (HTML=Hyper Text Markup Language) and pictures

over the worldwide Internet or a local network to the Web

browser. This happen HTTP-based (Hyper Text Transfer

Protocol). A TCP/IP protocol stack –that means it is based

on sophisticated and established standards– manages the

entire communication. Web server (HTTP server) and

browser (HTTP client) build TCP/IP applications.

The aim of this paper is to put up a low-cost electronic

prototype, using an embedded web-server, with a built-in

TCP-IP connectivity [4], so as to allow receiving and

sending digital commands for automation and monitoring

purpose without the need to have a dedicated server PC or

even special software.

Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies (ICSCCN 2011)

978-1-61284-653-8/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 634

II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

The architecture of the automation and monitoring system

is shown in Fig. 1. It is composed of three parts; embedded

webserver which is the heart of the home automation and

monitoring system, sensors and appliances and the client

side. The embedded webserver is interfaced to the

appliances and the sensors and it is via the embedded

webserver that a client can control the appliances and

monitor the sensors. An embedded web server is a web

server that is incorporated into another embedded device or

an appliance. Embedding a web server as shown in Fig. 2

allows a product to contain its own user interface, in the

form of web pages. Users interact with the product using

standard web browsers.

Figure 1 System Architecture

Figure 2 Embedded Web Server ‘WIZ220IO’

In our proposed design, we use a low cost WIZ220IO [5] as

the embedded web server for the implementation of the

prototype. WIZ220IO is an embedded remote I/O module

which is able to control and monitor I/O port remotely via

Internet. It is possible to monitor and control I/O port by

using Windows application program or the embedded Web

server. There are 16 digital I/O ports and 4 analog I/O

supported by WIZ220IO. Its main features are:

• Operates as HTTP Server

• Provides Configuration Tool Program for easy

control, monitoring and configuration

• Supports 10/100Mbps Ethernet

• 8 Digital Input Ports

• 8 Digital Output ports

• 2 Analog Input Ports with 12-bit resolution

(Voltage Type)

• 2 Analog Output Ports with 12-bit resolution

(Voltage Type)

• 1 UART Output Port

• Data acquisition and transmitting to specified host

III. CONFIGURATION OF WEB SERVER

A. Basic Description

Figure 3 Configuration Tool v1.0

Configuration of the web server is done with the help of the

configuration tool v1.0, the snapshot of which is shown in

Fig. 3. This configuration tool supports changing module’s

configuration, I/O monitoring and controlling, firmware

uploading and Webpage uploading.

B. Network Tab

In the Network Tab of the configuration tool, network

information and the notification parameters can be set. The

network information is for a communication through the

Ethernet such as an IP address, a gateway address and a

subnet mask. If the module cannot be assigned with the

fixed information from ISP provider, you can set the DHCP

option. By setting DHCP option, the network information

can be assigned by DHCP server. The notification option is

a function for sending the I/O values to the specified host

Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies (ICSCCN 2011)

978-1-61284-653-8/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 635

every specified period. It is useful for acquiring data log.

The snapshot of the network tab is shown in Fig. 4.

Figure 4 Network Tab

C. Serial Tab

Serial tab as shown in Fig. 5 is for the UART configuration.

The UART is used to display debug message and to output

the UART data through the webpage.

Figure 5 Serial Tab

Serial Tab of the Configuration Tool provides:

• Speed: It supports baud rate from 1200bps to

230400bps.

• Data Bit: It supports 7bit or 8bit of data bit.

• Parity: It supports odd, even and none option of

parity.

• Stop Bit: It supports only 1bit.

• Flow: It supports flow control – none, RTS/CTS.

D. Input / Output Tab

Input/output tab is shown in Fig. 6. It is used for the I/O

control and monitoring. When you click the “Update I/O

Status” button, it will display I/O parameters at that time. In

the Digital parameters, a green indicator means port is

asserted ‘HIGH’ and a gray indicator means ‘LOW’. Each

port can be set ‘HIGH’ as checking checkbox in ‘Digital

Output Control’ and click the ‘Update I/O Status’ button.

The Analog I/O has range from 0 to 4095 and it has voltage

type. In the Analog input status, ‘4095’ means maximum

input value that is same to ‘5V_Input’ (Vcc) value.

However, analog output maximum value ‘4095’ generates

4V. In other word, the analog output maximum value is 4V.

Figure 6 Input/output Tab

III. WEB PAGE UPLOAD

After configuring the web server, we can upload web

pages in the server using the web page upload option.

The uploaded web pages will contain the above

mentioned tabs using which we can control the

appliances and the sensors by simply accessing the

web pages using a simple web browser and then

changing the status of the ports at the tabs. One of the

sample uploaded web page using our proposed

prototype is shown in Fig. 7.

Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies (ICSCCN 2011)

978-1-61284-653-8/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 636

Figure 7. Uploaded Web Page

IV. CONCLUSION

An embedded automation and monitoring system is

successfully implemented. The proposed system uses an

embedded web server which monitors and controls the

sensors and the home appliances. The system is accessible

from any Computer/Laptop, PDA or Smartphone having

internet connectivity. This not only eliminates the need for

having a dedicated server PC maintaining the web-pages,

but also the need for special software, thus proving

beneficial in terms of minimizing cost.

REFERENCES [1] Ximin Zhang, Junding Sun, Lihua Zhou, “Development Of an

Internet Home Automation System using Java and

Dynamic DNS Service”, Sixth International Conference on Parallel

and Distributed Computing, Applications and

Technologies, 2005.

[2] “Connectivity FAQs,” http://www.microchip.com.

[3] Luigino Benetazzo, Matteo Bertocco, Franco Ferraris,

Alessandro Ferrero, Carlo Offelli, Marco Parvis, Vincenzo Piuri, “A

Web-Based Distributed Virtual Educational Laboratory,” IEEE

Transaction on Instrumentation and Measurements, vol.49, pp. 349–

356, April 2000.

[4] Z-World Inc, 2001. “An Introduction to TCP/IP for Embedded

System Designers”.

[5] “WIZ220IO”. Available: http://www.wiznet.co.kr.

Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies (ICSCCN 2011)

978-1-61284-653-8/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 637