A Smart City Application: A Fully Controlled Street Lighting Isle Based on Raspberry-Pi Card, a ZigBee Sensor Network and WiMAX

• Main Authors: Fabio Leccese, Marco Cagnetti, Daniele Trinca
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2014-12-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: control systems for smart grids; lighting system; wireless networks for smart grids; ZigBee; sensors; Raspberry-Pi; ARM processor
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/14/12/24408

A smart city application has been realized and tested. It is a fully remote controlled isle of lamp posts based on new technologies. It has been designed and organized in different hierarchical layers, which perform local activities to physically control the lamp posts and transmit information with another for remote control. Locally, each lamp post uses an electronic card for management and a ZigBee tlc network transmits data to a central control unit, which manages the whole isle. The central unit is realized with a Raspberry-Pi control card due to its good computing performance at very low price. Finally, a WiMAX connection was tested and used to remotely control the smart grid, thus overcoming the distance limitations of commercial Wi-Fi networks. The isle has been realized and tested for some months in the field.