Secure Environmental Monitoring using IoT-based Cyber System with Authentication

Recent advancements in Electronics, Computers, and Network Communication, are enabling Internet of Things (IoT) being implemented in everyday life, and in particular for environmental monitoring. IoT cyber physical computing is very essential for low cost, real time collection of local environmental data for meteorological studies on a smaller regional scale. The field of IoT also has importance to academics as it is a novel technological process encompassing multiple STEM areas of study such Embedded Systems; Big Data; Data Science, Analytics, and Visualization; AI and Machine Learning; Cybersecurity and Resilience. In this work, we present a secure weather monitoring system that leverages the ESP32 microcontroller as a webserver that can provide real-time weather data collection and transmission, ensuring resilience by a two-level authentication mechanism. The microcontroller is interfaced to a sensor AHT20/BMP280 to collect accurate local weather data such as temperature, pressure, and humidity. The ESP32 is known for its low power consumption and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities, making it an ideal choice for IoT applications that require efficient and reliable data transmission. Over a series of experiments under varying environmental conditions, the results showed that the system could consistently monitor weather data with minimal latency and high reliability under secured resilience. This is an educational mini project that would promote student learning of STEM disciplines by practice to apply to various fields including industrial automation, smart home systems, and environmental monitoring. The work is a part of DHS Summer Research Program for Minority Serving Institutions to promote STEM education (DHS-SRTMSI-2024-FacultyApp).