Development of Detection and Flood Monitoring Via Blynk Apps

ABSTRACT


INTRODUCTION
Floods are one of the common natural disasters that occur all around the globe.Natural floods disaster is said to be associated wih continuous downpour of heavy rains for a period of time.Malaysia, which is located at the tropical region receives average annual rainfall of 2500 mm for the Peninsula area while Sabah and Sarawak receive 3500 mm [1].Flash floods happened when there is a heavily rainfall occurred in a short of period and can caused massive traffic jam in the affected area.Thus, it is important to be able to warn the people who are most at risk, so that the effects of these disasters can be reduced.Some cases in Selangor, the level of flood rises rapidly and the people only have limited time to prepare for their evacuation.There also some place that has the flood alert system for early warning to citizen, but most of it, usually intended for the respective organizations, plus limited distance that the system can cover [2].Therefore, when there is flooding cases happen, it takes time to reach the people living nearby, and the people cannot save most of their belonging as water rises quickly.The worse case happens from the flood when buildings, houses, the school and bridges also affected by the flood and faced the instant damages.Generally, flooding cannot be stopped and unavoidable, but early detection or warning system can be used to reduce losses faced by the citizen and government.
Recently, there is an issues of flash flood all over Malaysia including Shah Alam (Selangor), Manek Urai (Kelantan), Penampang (Sabah), Geogetown (Penang) and Sibu (Sarawak).However, the way people react during the flood occurance is not immediately due to detection and information gathered reaction is In this advance technology, some project of flood monitoring already existed in order to inform people when flood happen.A project about flood level indicator and risk warning system for remote location monitoring using flood observatory system was studied [2] via GSM modem in order to send information about flood level and receive commands from the monitoring station.A smartphone is defined as a phone enabled for email and internet use.Applications (apps) are downloadable items of software which fullfil a specific role [3].Flood warning system with Wi-Fi network based on smartphone o access data of rainfall, water level and flood status in Palembang city and Kudus district was designed [4], [5].Today wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has become an integral part of any developing country as it is being used nowadays as the primary monitoring system in various applications.A real-time flood monitoring which can monitor the real-time data of water condition remotely using WSN was studied [6].WSN eliminate the hazards associated with the wiring systems and make data measurement and monitoring process much easier and cost effective [7].The Internet of Things (IoT) is developing tremendously day by day because of the continuous effects of a wide community.The IoT tends to have unlimited applications, as there are seemingly unlimited needs in every sphere of life [8].The IoT is network of native devices communicating with each other over the internet to perform a unified task in a smarter way.NodeMCU ESP8266 has been used as the basis device which integrated and communicate with the internet for monitoring of heart rate, heart pulse sensor as well for ambient environment purposes [9], [10].The IoT platform for remote monitoring and sensing data that provides a very basic and easy setup using Blynk server [11].Based on this, the purpose of this research is to develop a low cost WSN for flood monitoring and warning system in UiTM Shah Alam based on Blynk applications (apps).The NodeMCU-based technology and inexpensive ultrasonic sensor network components via Blynk apps is designed to detect flood and send an alert to the user smartphone through the WIFi.

RESEARCH METHOD 2.1. Case Study
Flash flood occurs in the Klang Valley when there is unusually intense rainfall over a short period of time.However, intense rainfalls conspires with other factors such as drainage characteristics, which involve rock, soil types, vegetation and land use, all of which contribute to the occurrence, location and intensity of flash floods.Floods can have economic, social and environment impacts.However, in the case of flash floods, damage and losses from these events are sometimes higher than from other ordinary floods [12].First history of flood happened in Selangor was at TTDI Jaya, Shah Alam.The Damansara River which flows through TTDI Jaya is 21 km long and TTDI Jaya falls within Shah Alam Council boundaries.Two years after the first residents moved into TTDI Jaya, in March 2006, they were shocked when the first flash flood hit the area after an hour of heavy rain.Between 1994 and 2005, twelve flash floods, six have infiltrated people's homes.The flash floods that happened in 1996 and 2000 was the worst: 90 per cent of the area was covered with water.
Figure 1 shows the picture taken five hours after the Damansara River overflowed its banks.To overcome this crisis of flash flood, the Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID) had introduced a mechanicm in TTDI Jaya area.The mechanism introduced such as reseivour, the installation system consisting of ultrasonic sensor as well as digital camera in the middle of Damansara River as shown in Figure 2 supported by SCADA system to deliver the status of the river to the respective authority.Flooding is a common problem that Universiti Teknologi MARA or UiTM faced every year especially along Jalan Ilmu 1/1 as shown in Figure 3. Drainage which lies between Office International Affair Building and UiTM Health Centre cannot accommodate a sudden heavy rainfalls, causing the area around flooded quickly.There are a lot of damages caused by these floods such as sinking cars at the parking area and a traffic jam.This area has been experiencing severe flash flood since December 2011 until now if heavy rain does not stop for three hours.Universiti Teknologi MARA or UiTM Shah Alam suffered a severe flooding after three hours.Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) Flood Monitoring is developed to observe the status flooding which could alert people who were in the area frequently affected by floods in UiTM Shah Alam.The system consists of a transmitter and receiver, known as sensor node and base station.The sensor node will detect the water level using an ultrasonic sensor and displays the current value on the LCD.When the water level reaches a certain level that reflects the hazards, both devices will generate an alarm system to notify people that the water level is increasing and could endanger life.
Figure 5 shows the overall block diagram of the system.Initially, first NodeMCU attached with ultrasonic sensor will detect the flood level.Then, it will display the data on the LCD screen.The data will be send to Blynk application via wireless connection.The data also will be display in the Blynk application.At the same time, the data is stored in a CSV database, through email this data can be converted into excel form, as well as being transmitted to the second NodeMCU via Blynk Bridge.This data will alert the local authority for further action once the level reaches warning and critical level which triggers the buzzer and LED.The concept of the proposed work are based on the existing system installed in Damansara River, TTDI Jaya.

Blynk Application
Blynk is a platform with IOS and Android application to control Arduino, Raspberry Pi and the likes over the internet [1].It's a digital dashboard where it can build a graphic interface for the user by simply drag  First, designing the application where the designer can select the widget for their apps.Through these apps the flood's level also will be display.There will be LCD to display the level indicator (safety, warning and critical level).Next, the value display will display the flood's level sense by ultrasonic sensor.Besides that, the LED will lights up according to the current level.Lastly the history graph will track the flood's level and save it into database.Figure 7 shows the layout design of Blynk used in this work.In Figure 7 it illustrates the step by step procedures in building the Blynk apps using a smartphone.Firstly, install or download Blynk apps for android or iOS at Google plays store or app store.To interface with Arduino, user needs to install Blynk library at library folder of Arduino IDE.After finish the installation, open the apps on the smartphone and create a new account to login for a new project.For this project, the hardware selected is NodeMCU and the communication type is WiFi ESP8266.To build a project, the authtoken needs to be obtained first.Once the user obtaining the authtoken, user can proceed to design the Blynk apps.Once confirmed, the user can setup the button widget as shown in Figure 7 where each of the widgets has its own settings.
Figure 8 shows the reading of data sense from the ultrasonic sensor from the first NodeMCU in Blynk application platform.There are three mode displays on the screen of the LCD which also reflects on the screen of the smart phone using Blynk application.On the screen, it displayed level of water either in safety, warning or critical level to alert the person in charge.The distance of the water is also displays on the widgets which used LED as the indicator (green for safety, orange for warning and red for critical).This history graph can be used to track the flood level over the time.There will be three states which are level 1, level 2 and level 3 to give alarm to the people.At first NodeMCU, the data sensed by the sensor will be display at the LCD reflecting the level indicator as well as the distance.Once the data being received by the second NodeMCU, when level 1 detected there were nothing happen, level 2 LED will blink and buzzer triggered, lastly, at level 3 LED turn ON, as well as the buzzer.Table 1 tabulates the range of level indicator that indicates the distance of sensor for safety purposes.The database is used to store the data tracked by the history graph.The data which in a form of CSV will be converted in excel format as shown in Figure 9.All the information is needed in order to monitor the flood level and for future improvement of the system.

. Indoor Water Level Detection
This indoor experiment was conducted at Robotic Laboratory located at Level 4, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, UiTM Shah Alam Campus.To test whether the prototype works accordingly, an experimental was conducted to test the signaling and measurement of water detected by transmitter and receiver.From Figure 11 and Figure 12, it can be seen that as the water increases over time the distance between the sensor and the surface of the water decreases.The distance detected by the sensor node is then transmitted to the base station.This means that the base station manages to receive the data from the sensor node.

Outdoor Water Level Detection
Real-time monitoring of water level was conducted at Jalan Ilmu 1/1, UiTM Shah alam Campus.The hardware for first NodeMCU was hanging at the drainage system while the hardware for second NodeMCU was placed at the bridge nearby.Figure 13 shows the data recorded taken on the 3 rd , 6 th and 7 th June 2016.The average distance for the first day is 165 cm, for the second day is 168 cm and the last day is 167 cm.The distance increases on the second day when compared to the first test and on the third day it decreases when comparing to the second day.

CONCLUSION
This project based on the development of a smart flood monitoring system using ultrasonic sensor with NodeMCU and Blynk application which used the WSN concept.The result is a single control system that provides flexibility, low cost and easy access.WSN based on Blynk platform is an ideal platform to monitor flash floods and also as early warnings.Through the experiment conducted, it shows that this system can be used for detecting, monitoring and alerting the community in UiTM Shah Alam in case of flash flood.

Figure 1 .Figure 2 .
Figure 1.The Flash Flood Situation on Sunday Morning, 26 th February 2006 in TTDI Jaya

BaseFigure 5 .
Figure 5. Block Diagram of the System Indonesian J Elec Eng & Comp Sci ISSN: 2502-4752  Development of Detection and Flood Monitoring Via Blynk Apps (Mahanijah Md Kamal) 365 and drop the widgets.Blynk is another supporting device which is linked to the internet over Wi-Fi and ESP8266 modules.Blynk was designed to control hardware remotely where it can diplays data, store the data and motor the data.There are three major stages in the Blynk platform; Blynk cloud, Blynk apps and Blynk database as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.The Flow of Database via Blynk Application

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Step to Build WSN Flood Monitoring of Blynk Application

Figure 9 .Figure 10 :
Figure 9.The Example of History graph in Blynk Application

Table 1 .
Distance vs Level