Low-Cost ESP32, Raspberry Pi, Node-Red, and

MQTT Protocol Based SCADA System

Atefeh Zare M. Tariq Iqbal

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of
Engineering and Applied Science Engineering and Applied Science
Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN)
St. John’s, NL A1B 3X5, Canada St. John’s, NL A1B 3X5, Canada
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— Growing energy cost and demand has motivated utilizes reliable and commonly available components to
many organizations to achieve smart ways to monitor, control, fulfill the four main functions of a SCADA system: Data
and save energy. Smart automation can reduce costs while still collection, network data communication, data presentation,
satisfying energy demand. The residential, commercial, and and remote monitoring and supervisory control [4].
industrial sectors can utilize the technologies of the Internet of
Things (IoT) to manage energy consumption better. This paper Several researchers around the world have designed
presents a low-cost, open-source, and reliable Supervisory SCADA systems based on IoT architecture in the past. Lekic
Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for home et al. [5] performed an IoT-based SCADA system with the
monitoring and control system. The presented SCADA system Raspberry Pi3. Temperature and humidity sensors acquired
consists of analog sensors, ESP32, Node-RED, and Message the desired data, and the IBM Bluemix cloud platform was
Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) through local Wi-Fi to utilized to receive, visualize, and manage the collected
remotely access and control appliances. This system helps the sensor data via the web while using the Node-Red and Web
users to monitor various conditions in the home, such as Socket protocols for data exchange and communication
temperature, humidity, pressure, and light intensity. Thus, between the cloud platform and sensors connected to the
users can remotely monitor various devices such as lights, fans, Raspberry Pi.
heating/cooling systems, make decisions based on the feedback
of sensors. In [6], Rai et al., Using IoT, implemented a system to
provide the end-users with a cost-effective and portable
Index Terms—ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT), Wi-Fi intelligent monitoring system and enable devices remotely.
network, MQTT, Node-RED, Sensors The proposed system required a low-resolution video camera
module interfaced with the Arducam ESP32 UNO board.
I. INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW The resulting video was streamed using ESP32 integrated
Nowadays, the fraction of automation systems in the Wi-Fi to display on the 1.8-inches SPI TFT Adafruit display
residential sector is rising rapidly because of numerous life module.
improvements such as comfort, convenience, centralized
control of appliances, cost reduction, energy-saving, security, M. Al-Kuwari et al. [7] demonstrated sensing and
and safety. As a home automation system enhances the life monitoring platform on smart and IoT-based home
quality for users, especially for the elderly, differently abled automation system, where the authors presented a basic
persons, and people who want to monitor and manage their concept of how home automation can be deployed using IoT.
home devices' operation, it is quietly important to have a Pravalika et al. [8] implemented a home automation
proper control system. SCADA technologies implement a system through the Wi-Fi module, Massachusetts Institute of
unique platform that senses and monitors remote devices, Technology (MIT) app, and a web page server using ESP32
acquires data from them, and sends limited control to monitor home devices.
instructions. Besides that, this system allows users to
discover the status of devices and their residence conditions In [9], the MQTT-based home automation system using
remotely. ESP8266 Node MCU was established for remote monitoring
and controlling through a standard gateway. This system was
Home automation systems using SCADA consists of four designed utilizing the GSM (Global System for Mobile
major parts. The first part is the sensing devices placed at Communications) network.
several locations throughout the home to measure the desired
variables. The second part is Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) In [10], Kodali demonstrated IoT-based smart
for acquiring remote data from sensors. The third one is environment monitoring using Arduino and C embedded
Master Terminal Units (MTUs) to process the received data programming devices, which were remotely controlled with
and deal with Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) [1]. The last the Internet. Temperature, humidity, light level, vibration,
part of SCADA is the communication channel to connect the and air quality sensors connected to the controller for
RTUs to the MTUs [ 2 ,3]. measurement and ESP8266 Node MCU for the Wi-Fi
network.
SCADA technology has been developed over the past
years to remotely monitor and control processes. In this Pujari et al. [11] demonstrated a smart home system that
work, an open-source and low-cost SCADA system based on uses Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet, remotely monitor and
the Internet of Things is introduced. This SCADA system control the appliances, and surveillance. Sensors were
connected to ESP32 to collect data. All acquired data was

978-1-7281-9615-2/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE

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uploaded to Firebase via the ESP32's built-in Wi-Fi, making sensors data with specific topics to the MQTT broker
it possible to control the home environment using the (Mosquitto broker), while personal computers and mobile
developed applications. devices subscribe to the topics to visualize the published data
In [12], the IoT-based SCADA system proposed which the on the server. MQTT protocol makes the supervisory control
Raspberry Pi3 and Intel Edison board used for acquiring possible in this project.
sensor inputs. Collected sensor data are transmitted to
Amazon Web Services (AWS) through MQTT brokers in
Node-Red. On the AWS IoT platform, several monitoring
and control schemes inducted using Amazon's Voice Service
named Alexa.
In this work, a low-cost and open-source SCADA system
is developed that uses Wi-Fi, the MQTT protocol, and Node-
Red. The proposed system can provide detailed
measurements of temperature, pressure, humidity, and light
density. Besides that, the states of the devices at home are
being traced. Therefore, users can understand the status of
their home devices such as lights, fans, air conditioners, or
heating/cooling systems then remotely control them.
II. SYSTEM DESIGN Fig. 2. MQTT Architecture.
The proposed SCADA system block diagram is presented
in fig.1. It is implemented using ESP32 as the sensor B. Raspberry Pi
gateway and RTU and Raspberry Pi2 as a local server. The Raspberry Pi2 model B is used as the local server at a
SparkFun Atmospheric Breakout Sensor-BME280 sensor local network, including MQTT broker, Node-Red, SQLite.
and an LDR are connected to ESP32 to acquire the desired
data and the dashboard to receive, visualize and manage the C. ESP32 Thing
acquired sensors data over the web while using Node-Red The ESP32 Thing is developed by SparkFun Electronics.
and MQTT protocol for data exchange and communication It is one of the most low-cost, low-power, and small
between the MQTT clients such as end-users and the ESP32 microcontrollers included Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules. Fig.
connected sensors while the acquired data are being stored in 3 shows a picture of the SparkFun ESP32 board.
SQLite as a web server. Each component is described in
detail as following:

Fig. 1. The proposed SCADA system block diagram.

A. MQTT Communication Protocol

As shown in Fig. 2, MQTT is a publish/subscribe protocol.
It is a lightweight and straightforward messaging tool
designed for unreliable networks and constrained devices
and low bandwidth. It is a suitable solution for this design Fig.3. Pin description of ESP32.
since it provides simple communication between the server
(MQTT broker) and clients (ESP32 microcontroller and The board operating signal voltage range is 2.2 V to 3.6 V,
computers and mobile devices) [9-10, 13]. Clients can and it can be supplied with either a 5 V USB power supply
subscribe to the topics or publish the data to topics of any or with a battery. The microcontroller is programmed with
kind of data. The broker then distributes the data to any the Arduino software integrated development environment
client that has subscribed to that topic. Eclipse Mosquitto (IDE). The Arduino IDE allows experts to write the desired
software is being run as a broker on the local server programs and upload them to the board via a USB cable. In
(Raspberry Pi2). this work, the ESP32 microcontroller is programmed as an
In this project, the ESP32 microcontroller publishes the MQTT client using the Arduino IDE software. The MQTT

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Client Library called PubSubClient. The program is such that Lux= (500/VO)-50 (3)
the board collects the measured real-time values of desired
variables, displays the values on the Arduino IDE Serial The obtained Lux value is being used for controlling the
Monitor, and continuously publishes real-time data to the LED.
MQTT broker.
D. SparkFun Atmospheric Sensor Breakout BME280 F. Node-Red
The SparkFun BME280 Atmospheric Sensor Breakout is Node-RED is an open-source programming tool used for
used to measure pressure, humidity, and temperature wiring together hardware devices, APIs, and online services
readings, all with a tiny breakout. It is shown in Fig. 4. The smartly [5]. It can be installed on a Linux-based platform,
BME280 Breakout is designed to be deployed in and it provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to
indoor/outdoor navigation, home automation, etc. The on- wire together flows using various nodes in the palette that
board BME280 sensor measures atmospheric pressure, can be deployed to its runtime.
humidity, and temperature. The breakout presents a 5V
G. Database and dashboard
tolerant I2C interface (with a pull-up resistor to 3.3V to be
cooperative with ESP32). An SQLite database using the litedb node on the Node-
RED platform is installed to create database tables and store
data. As a very lightweight relational database, SQLite does
not need complex setup procedures, making it an ideal
database management system to use for embedded systems
and rapid prototyping. In this work, SQLite is set up to
generate database, then stored data an easy to use dashboard
(Node-Red dashboard) is used to read the acquired data
from the data base.
Fig.4. SparkFun Atmospheric Sensor Breakout BME280.
Since the sensor data are constructed data type as MQTT
messages that will be published to an MQTT broker,
E. Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) Arduino IDE sketch and Node-Red flow are used to transfer
The LDR is a variable resistor. Fig. 5 presents LDR and its those MQTT messages and then stores them in the database.
step-down resistor connection. The resistance of the LDR Node-Red dashboard is a web-based data monitoring tool
inversely proportionates to the light intensity. It shows that can be combined to SQLite.
maximum resistance in the absence of light and minimum
III. SYSTEM TESTING AND RESULTS
resistance in the presence of light. Considering this
characteristic, in this project, during the nighttime, LDR The home automation system's proposed design is used to
turns the LED ON and reversely makes the LED OFF during monitor and control the house appliances while maintaining
the daytime. the minimum expected comfortable living conditions.
The flow chart of the proposed system is shown in Fig. 6.
Accordingly, a prototype is shown in Fig. 5 is made to
measure the desired variables. This prototype can be located
in each room of the house. The sensors acquired data is
being processed and used to control smart appliances such
as smart LEDs, air conditioners, fans, etc.

Fig.5. LDR and its step-down resistor connection.

The relationship between the resistance RL and light

intensity Lux for a typical LDR is [14]:

RL = 500/Lux (1)

With the LDR connected to 3.3V through a 10K resistor,

the output voltage of the LDR is:

VO = (10*RL)/(RL+10) (2)

From equation (1) and (2), light intensity obtained as

follows: Fig. 5. Proposed SCADA system prototype.

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 As shown in Fig. 7, the LDR is darken using a piece of
paper to change the state of the LED which is presented in
Fig. 8.

Fig. 7. The LED is turned on automatically based on the threshold value.

Fig. 8. The status of LED in Node-Red dashboard.

As mentioned earlier, the ESP32 controller subscribes to

the published command, created by the end-user through the
web interface, and transmitted by the Node-Red. Based on
the received message, ESP32 sends a command to the LED
to turn it ON/OFF
The implemented system is tested to evaluate its
capability. Results provided in Fig. 9, 10 show the recorded
values of temperature, humidity, and light density, and
pressure, which are acquired and displayed over time
through a data-viewing dashboard.

Fig. 6. The flow chart of the proposed SCADA system.

In this project a yellow LED is used to test the automatic

control ability of the system and a Red LED is implemented Fig. 9. The Red LED is controlled remotely by using Node-Red dashboard.
to evaluate the supervisory control capability of the proposed
SCADA system.
This system monitors light intensity, temperature,
humidity, and pressure values. If the recorded light intensity
value goes beyond the set high or low value of the threshold
level, the controller will generate the signal to turn the LED
OFF/ON. Then the user will be notified by the LED status
on the dashboard, this feature is presented in Fig. 7 and 8.

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