Remote Monitoring System based on a Wi-Fi Controlled Car Using Raspberry Pi

Developing surveillance and monitoring systems can be quite challenging at times, since the systems should be designed with consideration of the environment to be monitored. Good surveillance systems need to have dynamic features, e.g. monitoring cameras that are mobile and can move around the area being monitored. One scenario that requires such mobile monitoring is the surveillance of a large building with many levels, which would incur a high cost to install many cameras at many places. Monitoring such a large area would also be a challenge for the security officers, as they will need to spend too much time to patrol covering all places. Other scenarios that require dynamic surveillance systems include dangerous areas, e.g. areas with explosion and fire risk, or those contaminated with toxic gases. Another use case includes areas that cannot be accessed by humans. To address these challenges, we propose a dynamic monitoring system based on a moving camera carried by a Wi-Fi remote controlled car. The remote-controlled (RC) car is able to move on its own in an area remote from the operator. Users can be in the next room, the next building, or even in another country while controlling the movement of the car via the Internet. Some sensing mechanism is needed to help the user to locate the current location of the car and effectively navigate. Thus, the camera that is attached to the car also act like the eyes showing the frontal view of the car to be seen by the user via a browser in real-time. This system is using Wi-Fi as the only communication medium to connect the car to the server. The web application which provides the interface for the user to interact with the car also provides live streaming views in the vicinity to be monitored, i.e. via some other CCTV cameras installed in the area.