10th IEEE International Conference on Communication Systems and Network Technologies

S-LIGHT: Smart LED Lamppost using PWM-based

2021 10th IEEE International Conference on Communication Systems and Network Technologies (CSNT) | 978-1-6654-2306-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/CSNT51715.2021.9509652

Adaptive Light Controller

Sara AlRuwais, Rawabi AlQahtani, Nuwayyir AlHajri, Batool AlHashim, Abul Bashar, Loay AlZubaidi

College of Computer Engineering and Sciences

Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University
Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia 31952
Email: [email protected]

Abstract— Conventional streetlight’s constant need for high higher operating expenses. As we know the electrical energy
power and the ill effects it has spawned on the environmental consumption of street lighting constitutes a critical role in
ecosystem has led researchers to adopt the idea of smart lights
total energy consumption. Therefore, integrating different
in order to minimize energy consumption and maximize power
efficiency. This paper proposes S-LIGHT, which is a PWM- technologies and replacing conventional lighting technology
based LED adaptive light controlling system that can be with innovative lighting solutions is necessary for total
deployed at public parks and other outdoor recreational venues, energy savings. This power-saving technique has become
which applies intelligent illumination control of an LED lights. popular in today’s modern world of computerization and
The design is based on Pulse Width Modulation technique which digitization as it can save up to 40% of lighting energy that is
optimizes the overall power consumption and simultaneously
being consumed [3]. We began researching implementations
supporting a multi-functional and user-friendly post. Smart
street lighting aims to make cities feel safer at night, make lights of smart lighting systems and have discovered that they are
more efficient, and substantially reduce costs of maintenance initially energy-efficient lights that maintain the desired level
and energy by integrating sensors and alternative technologies of brightness where it is needed while adjusting the
to automate the light. S-LIGHT uses an Arduino UNO board brightness to a minimum when not required. Including
along with a Passive Infrared (PIR) sensor to swiftly increase adapting the brightness to the environment in which it is
the brightness of the high-power LED light during the night in
the presence of human motion, and a Light Dependent Resistor
installed in. These indoors or outdoors smart lights integrate
(LDR) sensor to turn on/off the light by adapting itself to the sensors such as motion and light sensors that control when to
time of night/day. S-LIGHT also provides a multi-functional turn ON or turn OFF the light based on the user movement
post that supports an emergency button feature that easily and on the environment [8].
initiates an Emergency call to the police, a surveillance camera
that streams live footage of the area, and an LCD screen that To automate our light system to consume less power with
displays to the public awareness messages about the COVID-19 maximizing efficiency. We discovered that techniques such
pandemic. as Pulse Width Modulation (PMW) can be implemented to
control the brightness of an LED light by adequately cutting
Keywords: Smart Lighting; Street Lights; Passive Infrared up the electrical signal into distinct parts to minimize the
Sensor; Light Emitting Diode; Pulse Width Modulation. average power delivered by it. The average value of voltage
and current that is given to the load is managed by rapidly
I. INTRODUCTION turning on and off the switch between the supply and load.
The more time the switch is on compared to the off periods,
Street lighting is an essential public service that is
the higher the total power supplied to the load [2]. Our goal
considered an important aspect in today’s modern society.
was to develop a smart lighting system that is fully
The idea of artificially producing light to promote activity automated. The main objective of our lighting system will be
during the night is a crucial innovation to deploy, whether in controlled by two functions. The first one is automatic
rural or urban areas, to provide safety for pedestrians, traffic increment and decrement of LED brightness at nighttime
security, and enhancing a city’s appearance and features. It is based on human motion. The second one is automatic turn
a major technology that benefits drivers, bike riders, and on/off an LED light based on the amount of sunlight intensity.
pedestrians during the night. Streetlighting systems in the Furthermore, the light supports a multi-functional pole with
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia deploy traditional lamps that are three features, one which enables users to initiate an
switched on and off manually using a timer device that SOS/Emergency call with the help of a push-button. Second,
retrieves specific calendar information. And based on the site a surveillance camera feature that captures live footage of the
of installation, these devices will be programmed, area. Third, a LCD screen that stores and displays images. All
consequently, they will not be able to adapt to variable light these technologies combined together forms a system that is
situations such as overcast days and dust storms that might sustainable, energy-efficient and user-friendly.
occur throughout the year [2]. Thus, with such technology, The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
there will be definitely be a wastage of energy and hence

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DOI: 10.1109/CSNT.2021.58
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will provide an overview of the various smart lighting respond to the activities of vehicles and humans based on
systems integrated sensors such as motion detectors and light sensors
and the logic that anticipates different lighting situations.
Table I summarizes three different existing smart lighting
systems.
Comlight is a motion-sensing lighting control system
imported on LED street lights to automatically increase and
decrease the brightness of the light by sensing approaching
vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians. Comlight improves safety
and wellbeing in roads, in tandem with saving energy,
reducing CO2 emissions, and minimizing light pollution that
poses a serious threat, particularly to nightlife, with a
negative impact on plant and animal physiology [9].
Philips LED Street Lighting is a web of smart street lights
that are interconnected and managed efficiently. Philips LED
street lighting system eliminates the complexities of
transportation infrastructure together with providing a cost-
effective and sustainable choice for street lighting to ensure
traffic flows smoothly, people feel safe at night, and cities
save costs [14].

Fig. 1: Conceptual Design of S-LIGHT system InteliLIGHT Smart Street Lighting is a system controlled
remotely that ensures that the right amount of light is
used for outdoor areas. The details of the proposed system provided when needed. It is a friendly smart street lighting
design and implementation will be presented in Section III. control solution that is compatible with multiple
Experimental results and their discussions will be discussed communication technologies in smart city platforms. The
in Section IV. Conclusions and future directions for system operates autonomously based on light level sensors,
improving the proposed solution will be provided in Section time, or traffic necessities, by deploying smart scheduling
V. algorithms based on the astronomical calendar, light level
sensors, or motion detectors [7].
II. RELATED WORK
Based on the literature survey presented above regarding
In an era, rife with technology, numerous smart light
the different smart lighting systems, we propose to implement
systems have emerged to aid in the cause of sustainability,
a novel solution to this domain with the ensuing features. The
energy efficiency, and convenience. These systems can
conceptual design of the proposed system, S-LIGHT, is
ensure that dark areas are illuminated when in use [1].
shown in Fig. 1.
Supplementary, the use of automatic light dimming systems
helps to reduce energy consumption. These systems swiftly

TABLE I: Comparative Summary of Smart Light Systems

Comlight [9] Philips LED Street Lighting [14] InteliLIGHT Smart Street
Solution
Lighting [7]
A light control system that consists of radar A smart and versatile lighting system A smart street lighting control
sensors that sense approaching vehicles and that is capable of managing, system that provides
Main Idea pedestrians and hence increase brightness, maintaining, and monitoring the entire interoperability with different
otherwise it automatically dims. network of lights simply and efficiently. communication technologies and
IoT platforms.
Comlight saves in energy consumption up to 70 The system reduces energy use by up InteliLIGHT system reduces energy
- 80% in case of low traffic. As a result, reduces to 50% with connected lighting. As a loss up to 35%. It offers advanced
the emission of CO2 and light pollution. It is less result, reduction in CO2 emissions maintenance optimization tools for
in cost and maintenance because of the long eventuates, for greener, more fast and cost-efficient installation.
Benefits lifespan of LED lights. sustainable cities. Furthermore, the Moreover, the system integrates a
system lowers maintenance costs and GPS coordinate device to locate
reduces operating expenses. necessary repairs required.

The probability of failure in the communication The system does not support light auto- The system is at risk for cyber-
units will cause difficulty in finding out the unit dimming and motion detection. attacks when using a public Wi-Fi
Drawbacks that needs maintenance. network because of its IoT
functionality.

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 a. Smart LED light capable of automatic increment (iv) Light Dependent Resistor
and decrement of brightness established on light
and motion sensing inputs. Light Dependent Resistor (LDR), functions based on
b. The ESP32 CAM-based surveillance camera the photoconductivity principle, which states that the
captures and displays live footage of the area. conductivity of a material can be increased when the
c. An emergency button that, when triggered, initiates material is illuminated
an SOS/Emergency call to the police.
d. An LCD screen for imagery display that showcases
a variation of messages including public awareness
alerts regarding COVID-19 pandemic.
III. SYSTEM DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
The proposed system, S-LIGHT, consists of two main
parts, the hardware, and the software. This section
describes the details of the hardware used and the software
components used.
A. Hardware Design & Implementation
The various sub-components of the hardware system
that have been used to make S-LIGHT are described below.
(i) Arduino UNO R3
Arduino UNO R3 is a small-sized board based on the
ATmega328 AVR microcontroller. It has one power port,
one USB port, and 14 digital input/output pins of which
6 are used as PWM outputs, 6 are used as analog inputs [1].
For the purpose of the S-LIGHT, two Arduino UNO R3 Fig. 2: Process diagram of the emergency button feature in S-LIGHT
boards are considered as the backbone components, where by photons, electrons, or alpha particles [4]. The LDR is
they are used to perform two major features; which are, the made up of a semiconductor material that allows it to
smart LED light feature functionality and the built-in exhibit light-sensitive properties. When the light falls into
telephone feature functionality. the semiconductor material, the lattice absorbs the photons
(ii) High-Power LED while their energy is transferred to the electrons, therefore,
electrons will get the sufficient energy that allows them to
The High-Power LED is a small-sized chip that emits conduct electricity. Thus, the resistance of the LDR will
white light. It works on the electroluminescence principle, decrease [12]. For the purpose of the S-LIGHT, the LDR
which states that the High-Power LED conducts a constant sensor is responsible for automatically turning the LED
current through semiconducting crystal materials that light off during the day-time and on during the night-time.
vibrate the electrons, and hence the light is conducted
[13]. The High-Power LED can reach a power of at least 1 (v) GSM SIM900 Shield
Watt and a current of 100 milliamperes [6]. For the purpose The GSM SIM900 module is a shield board that is
of the S-LIGHT, the High-Power LED is used as the main compatible with the Arduino UNO R3 board. The Shield
light source, providing bright white-colored light at night- board has special features, including, the ability to send and
time. receive SMS messages and GPRS data. Also, it can scan
(iii) Passive Infrared Sensor and receive FM radio signals. Moreover, it can be used to
make and receive phone calls using the speaker and
The Passive Infrared sensor (PIR), uses the technology headphone jacks. Including that, the shield board consists
of infrared to detect human movement up to a distance of 7 of a SIM cardholder, and a GSM antenna [11]. For the
meters. Added to that, it is a low-cost sensor that requires purpose of the S-LIGHT, the GSM SIM900 module is the
an input voltage of 5V only, furthermore. The main main component of the emergency button feature, where it
material of the PIR sensor that helps to detect human allows serial communication to initiate the
movement is the pyroelectric crystal, where it detects the SOS/Emergency call. Fig. 2 shows the process diagram of
temperature emitted from humans. The PIR sensor the emergency button feature.
potentiometers are used to control the sensitivity and time
delay of the sensor, based on the user preference [5]. For (vi) ESP32 CAM
the purpose of the S-LIGHT, the PIR sensor is responsible The ESP32 CAM is a small-sized and low-cost board
for increasing the brightness of the LED light when human based on an ESP32 microcontroller that is used to capture
movement is detected. images and video. The ESP32 CAM has 9 GPIO pins, clock

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speed up to 160MHz, a built-in LED. It includes other average value of voltage and current fed to the load by
special features; such as supporting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, turning the switch between supply and load on/off at a fast
and UART interface. Along with a micro SD cardholder to rate. PMW mechanism steps can be seen in Fig. 3.
store captured images and videos [3]. For the purpose of
(ii) Camera Web Server
the S-LIGHT, the ESP32 CAM was used as the camera
module for the surveillance camera feature. Live streaming refers to streaming video that is sent
over the Internet in real-time, without first being recorded
and stored in some memory. The ESP32 CAM was used as
the camera module in implementing this technology. The
Camera Web Server example in the ESP32 library is an
open-source sketch that configures the ESP32 CAM board
as a web server, serving live feed captured by the camera
to a webpage that can be accessed by any browser, as long
as the device is connected to the same network as the
ESP32 CAM. The live footage is viewed by accessing the
board’s IP address. This process uses the ESP Camera
library that stores functions that grant access to the camera
and functions to capture images and record videos. Coupled
with the WiFi.h library which is comprised of functions that
permit setting up the ESP32 CAM as a web server.

(iii) Phone Call Initiation

SIM900 GSM/GPRS shield is a GSM modem that can
be incorporated to accomplish the same functionalities a
normal cell phone can do such as SMS text messages,
initiating or receiving phone calls, connecting to the
internet through GPRS, TCP/IP, and more. This technology
was integrated into the emergency button feature that
triggers an SOS/distress call when pressed, enabling users
Fig. 3: PMW mechanism steps in S-LIGHT with the quick capability to contact a police representative
(vii) Nextion HMI Display in the case of an emergency. The Arduino hardware has
built-in support for serial communication on its pins. The
The Nextion display is a human-machine interface native serial support is possible from a built-in piece of
(HMI) that provides a visualized interface to the user. The hardware called a Universal Asynchronous Receiver-
Nextion LCD is a TFT 480 x 320 resistive touch screen Transmitter (UART), which permits the ATmega chip to
display that requires a voltage of 5V and a current of receive serial communication. The SoftwareSerial.h library
145mA [10]. For the purpose of the S-LIGHT, the Nextion has been imported into the software to allow serial
LCD was used to display images illustrating the special communication on other digital pins of the Arduino UNO,
features of the S-LIGHT, along with public awareness along with the SIM900.h, and call.h libraries that are part
messages. of the Tiny Sine GSM library that was used. The software
steps of making a phone call are as follows:
B. Software Design & Implementation
Below are the software components that have been used (a) GSM Connection: The main goal of this step is
in S-LIGHT for programming the required functionalities. establishing a connection to the GSM network to enable
serial communication between the GSM SIM900 shield
and the Arduino UNO board.
(i) Light Dimming: PWM Mechanism
(b) Button State: In this process, the button state is
PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) is a method used to read to determine when to initiate or terminate the call. If
reduce the average power delivered by an electrical signal,
the push button is pressed whilst an on-going call is at
by effectively chopping it up into discrete parts. The
process, the current call will be terminated. Otherwise, a
technique controls analog devices with a digital output;
call will be initiated (see Fig. 2 for the details).
outputting a modulated signal from a digital device such as
a microcontroller unit (MCU) to operate an analog device. IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
It is one of the key factors by which MCUs control and
navigate popular analog devices such as variable-speed The S-LIGHT consists of four features: Smart LED
motors, dimmable lights, actuators, and speakers. In S- light dimming, emergency button, surveillance camera, and
LIGHT, the technique was implemented to fade the imagery display using an LCD. Each feature was tested
brightness of the high-power LED by controlling the independently to ensure that it functions as it is aimed for
the purpose of the project. Subsequently, all features were

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integrated and tested as one complete system. C. Nextion LCD Image Display
A. Smart LED Light Nextion LCD is used to display messages that illustrate
the main features of the S-LIGHT, which provides a
The smart LED light is an integral part of the system. The summary to observers of the system’s capabilities. To
connections of both the PIR sensor and the LDR sensor ensure the messages were displayed successfully, the
were integrated to automate the whole system. Different Nextion LCD was tested to assure that the images were
tests were conducted to examine its functionalities during uploaded properly. As a result of the testing process, it was
daytime and nighttime. As a result of the testing, it was found that the Nextion display is able to successfully output
found that the smart LED light can perform its designated the images on the screen as shown in Fig. 5 (testing and
functionality by subject- functional LCD images).

Fig. 4: Motion-based Auto Dimming Function in S-LIGHT

Fig. 6: ESP32 CAM live stream server in S-LIGHT
-ing light onto the LDR sensor which automatically
prevented voltage to pass through the high-power LED. D. Live Footage Display from Surveillance Camera
And initiating hand movements that gradually increased the ESP32 CAM is an integral part of the Surveillance Camera
brightness to the fullest. After an adjustable time duration, feature and the desired goal behind this feature is to attach
the LED switches to half brightness until it detects human a camera module on the final design that captures footage
motion once again (see Fig.4). of the area to promote a sense of safety and security to the
B. Phone Call Initiation by a Push Button public. This was implemented by connecting the ESP32
CAM module to a laptop using an external FTDI
The emergency button feature deploys a push-button programmer and a web server sketch was uploaded using
that initiates an SOS/Emergency call when triggered. The Arduino IDE accordingly. The camera was tested to check
emergency button was repeatedly tested to ensure it works its functionality of capturing and streaming live footage of
as per the requirements. As a result of the testing, it was the environment. As a result of the testing, it was found that
found that the emergency button was able to initiate a new the ESP32 CAM was able to perform the designated
call and terminate an on-going call successfully. Coupled functionality by using the unique IP address that was
with the speaker module that played a major role in the generated and accessing the live streaming server of the
testing process as it outputted the caller’s voice to enable ESP32 CAM through a web browser (as shown in Fig. 6).
clear communication. This successfully indicates that the
process was done correctly.

Fig. 5: Nextion image display testing in S-LIGHT system

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 emergency button that enables pedestrians to instantly
make an SOS/Emergency call, as well as a surveillance
camera and an LCD touch display. Our design,
implementation, and testing demonstrated the innovative
application of open-source hardware and software tools to
provide a solution that is low-cost, re-arrangeable, and
scalable. However, some limitations in our proposed
system are planned to be addressed as part of future work.
They are enlisted here:
● Solar energy panel power supply is a feature that
derives clean, pure energy from the sun which
helps tackle greenhouse gas emissions and
reduces the project’s collective dependence on
traditional electricity that is sourced from fossil
fuels.
● Weather station and real-time clock is a feature
that dynamically displays the current time,
temperature, and humidity levels. This feature
powered by the Nextion display enhances the
yielded capabilities of the Nextion display which
requires Wi-Fi connectivity and an extra
Fig. 7: S-LIGHT prototype design microcontroller.
E. Final Prototype
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Fig. 7 shows the images of the final prototype of S-
LIGHT system. As can be seen, the LED light is placed on The authors would like to sincerely thank the
the uppermost side of the pole. The motion detection sensor College of Computer Engineering and Science (CCES)
is placed under it. Along with a light sensor at the backside. at Prince Mohammed Bin Fahd University (PMU) for
The ESP32 CAM lens is allocated under the motion sensor their cooperation and support in accomplishing this
opening. Consecutively comes the Nextion display at a project.
vertical angle. Finally, the emergency button accompanied
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