Sistema baseado em comunicação LoRa e aplicativo para monitoramento e prevenção de incêndio em armazéns com algodão

Abstract

In 2022, 2,041 fire incidents were recorded in urban areas. They can have several causes, such as electrical problems, flammable fuels, equipment failures and negligence. By focusing on warehouses, these occurrences have become more frequent. Furthermore, when considering the materials present in these environments, the severity of the fire may vary, as each material reacts differently to fire. Among these materials, there are those that exhibit particularly unfavorable behavior when exposed to flames, such as cotton. When we deal with materials that contain carbon in their composition, carbon monoxide becomes an indicator of fire in its initial phase, being generated by the incomplete combustion of these materials. Furthermore, gases, such as Hydrogen (H2) and liquefied petroleum (LPG), can pose fire risks due to their flammability. This work aims to present a system for monitoring and preventing fire, being planned for a context of cotton warehouses, aiming to mitigate damage and speed up containment. The system has an endpoint with sensors installed in the warehouse that periodically collect information about CO (indicative of fire), and H2 and LPG (gases that can cause fire), in addition to temperature and humidity, essential for the adequate preservation of cotton. The data is transmitted via LoRa technology to a gateway, which collects and sends the information to a database (Firestore). The smartphone app accesses this information from the database to alert the user to possible fires. During the development of the project, tests were carried out to evaluate the capacity of the sensors, which proved to be effective over short distances, and to verify the efficiency of communication via LoRa in data transmission. The application was able to alert the user about risky situations. At the end of the project, the system demonstrated its functionality by displaying readings and alerting the user to potential fire risks. However, there were some resource limitations due to using the free plan for both app and database development.