Step 1. Hardware Setup
Step 2. Get the Bolt API key and Device ID
Step 3. Setup your environment
Step 4. Let’s create a telegram channel and a bot
Step 5 – Let's create an account and get API token from AQICN
Step 6. Let’s start writing python code

Published January 1, 2020 © GPL3+

Air Quality Monitoring System Using Bolt IoT

A System designed to alert the user about possible Air Quality condition of particular city.

IntermediateFull instructions provided2 hours1,557

Air Quality Monitoring System Using Bolt IoT

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Bolt IoT Bolt WiFi Module

Buzzer

Male/Female Jumper Wires

USB-A to Micro-USB Cable

Software apps and online services

Bolt IoT Bolt Cloud

Bolt IoT Bolt Python Library

Air Quality Programmatic APIs

Telegram API

Snappy Ubuntu Core

Story

A recent study conducted by IQAir AirVisual and Greenpeace stated that 7 out of the top 10 most air-polluted cities are in India and 22 out top 30. It’s clear that Air pollution is a severe issue for both human health and the economy. This led me to build a system that automatically checks air quality periodically using Bolt IoT and notifies me to take precautions.

So, let’s get started.

Step 1. Hardware Setup

Plug the longer end of the Buzzer to the Pin 0 of Bolt WIFI module and the shorter end to the ground pin (GND) using Male/Female Jumper Wire and connect the bolt IoT Wi-Fi module to laptop or any USB power source using USB A to micro USB cable.

Step 2. Get the Bolt API key and Device ID

1. Login to your Bolt Cloud and note down the Device ID under Devices section.

2. Now copy the API key generated under the API section, you can also generate a new API key by clicking “GENERATE NEW API KEY”.

3. Your API Key will generally look like this-

Fkfjfm8-dssfsf-ghgfsa-vfffv55-sds5oi (just for illustration)

API key in BOLT cloud platform

Step 3. Setup your environment

For this project I am installing an Ubuntu on VMware, you can also dual boot Ubuntu with your windows 10.

To install Ubuntu server image on VMware, follow the below steps –

1. Go to http://releases.ubuntu.com/18.04/ and download server image as shown in below image

2. Download VMware workstation for windows from below link and install - https://www.vmware.com/in/products/workstation-pro/workstation-pro-evaluation.html

Note – Make sure you have high-speed internet

3. After installing click on create a new virtual machine and select the “Installer Disk Image file(iso)” option. Next, browse and select the above-downloaded image and click Next.

4. Fill the username and password in the next window and click next.

5. Enter 10Gb for “Maximum disk size” and select “Store virtual disk as single file”.

6. Configure the hardware if necessary and click finish.

7. Let it install and reboot.

8. Voila! You have installed Ubuntu on VMware successfully.

9. Now lets update and setup necessary packages, enter the following commands one by one

To update the packages on Ubuntu to the latest version.

sudo apt-get -y update

To install python3 pip3, where pip3 is a package manager for python used to install and manage packages and libraries.

sudo apt install python3-pip

To install Bolt IoT library using pip

sudo pip3 install boltiot

Step 4. Let’s create a telegram channel and a bot

1. We will be making use of the telegram channel to broadcast Air Quality alerts periodically.

2. First, create a new channel in telegram and provide a suitable name and description as shown below.

3. In the next screen set the channel as Public and also enter the channel permanent link as per your wish. Save this channel link as “telegram_chat_id”, wherein below image its “aqi_alert”.

4. Now let’s create a bot for our channel. A bot is a third-party application that runs inside the telegram, we will use this bot to send alerts to our channel.

5. On the home screen of telegram, click on the search icon on the top right corner and search for botfather.

6. In search results, select the botfather which has a blue tick mark next to it.

7. The chat shows few possible commands, type “/newbot” to create a new bot.

8. Give proper name and username to your bot.

9. Once the bot is created successfully it generates a token. This token is used to send and receive messages through python.

10. Please save this note as “telegram_bot_id” where it is saved as “bot” followed by bot token.

11. Now let’s add the bot to our channel, go to channel description and select add administrator from 3 dot menu. Choose the bot from the search field and give proper rights to the bot.

1 / 3 • Select Add administator

12.Congratulations! You have successfully created a channel and a bot.

Step 5 – Let's create an account and get API token from AQICN

1. Go to below address and fill out all required credentials and click on submit

https://aqicn.org/data-platform/token/#/

NOTE - The API permits us to use 1000 API calls per second,

However, make sure you read all the terms and conditions and provide proper attributions before usage.

2. After submitting you will need to confirm your email address to get the API token, which looks like below image

Attributions-

This API belongs to https://aqicn.org/data-platform/token/#/

CPCB - India Central Pollution Control Board - http://cpcb.nic.in/

World Air Quality Index Project - https://waqi.info/

3. Copy and save the token URL which we will use it later in our python code.

4. To see the response of this request we can use the online service https://jsonlint.com/.

5. click the token URL and copy and paste the response in https://jsonlint.com/ as shown below and click validate JSON.

1 / 2 • AQI response

Step 6. Let’s start writing python code

1. Login to your Ubuntu server and create a folder by typing below command-

sudo mkdir aqi

2. After creating the above folder, we can enter the folder by using below command-

cd aqi

3. Next, create a new file by typing below command-

sudo nano aqi_alert.py

4. At first let us import required libraries such as JSON, requests, time and Bolt IoT library.

5. Next, we will set some of the global variables such as Bolt API key, Device ID, telegram bot and channel id which we copied and saved in earlier steps.

6. Then let us write a function to fetch AQI values of Mysore city every 15 mins.

7. You can also fetch the AQI values of your desired city by substituting your city name after feed-in below URL-

https://api.waqi.info/feed/{Enter_Your_City_Name}/?token=your_generated_token

8. Now let us write another function to send alerts to our telegram channel-

9. If there was an error in sending telegram alerts, it will print it in the console.

10. Next, we will write a function to switch on and off the buzzer for 10 seconds whenever conditions are met.

11. At last, we will write an infinite loop to check AQI values for certain thresholds every 15 minutes and send alerts through telegram and also switch ON and OFF the buzzer.

Note – Although I have set the timer to notify every 15 minutes, you can modify the time. sleep(value) to your desired interval.

12. Let’s save the code and run the python script using the below command in the terminal.

sudo python3 aqi_alert.py

Step 7. Result -

Telegram alerts every 15 minutes

Buzzer alert through Bolt IoT

Telegram response in Ubunutu terminal

Code

aqi_alert.py

import json
import requests
import time
from boltiot import Bolt

API_KEY = "your_bolt_api_key"
DEVICE_ID = "your_bolt_device_id"
telegram_bot_id = "bot_your_telegram_bot_id"
telegram_chat_id = "@aqi_alert"
bolt = Bolt(API_KEY,DEVICE_ID)

def aqi_check():
	url = "https://api.waqi.info/feed/mysore/?token=your_generated_api_token"
	response = requests.get(url)
	data = response.json()
	current_aqi = data['data']['aqi']
	city_name = data['data']['city']['name']
	status = data['status']
	return current_aqi,city_name,status;

def send_telegram_alert(message):
	url = "https://api.telegram.org/" + telegram_bot_id + "/sendMessage"
	data = {
		"chat_id": telegram_chat_id,
		"text": message
	}
	try:
		response = requests.request(
			"POST",
			url,
			params = data
		)
		print("This is the telegram url")
		print(url)
		print("This is the telegram response")
		print(response.text)
		telegram_data = json.loads(response.text)
		return telegram_data["ok"]
	except Exception as e:
		print("An error occurred in sending the alert message via Telegram")
		print(e)
		return False
def alarm():
	bolt.digitalWrite("0","HIGH")
	time.sleep(10)
	bolt.digitalWrite("0","LOW")

while True:
	aqi,city,status = aqi_check()
	if status != "ok":
		print("Response was unscessful")
		time.sleep(10)
		continue
	if (aqi >= 0 and aqi <= 50):
		message = f"Current Air Quality Index is {aqi} in {city}\nAir Quality is considered satisfactory"
		print(message)
		send_telegram_alert(message)
		alarm()
	elif (aqi >= 51 and aqi <= 100):
		message = f"Warning! Air Quality Index is {aqi} in {city}\nAir Quality is acceptable; However, for some reason there may be a moderate health concern"
		print(message)
		send_telegram_alert(message)
		alarm()
	elif (aqi >= 101 and aqi <= 150):
		message = f"Warning! Air Quality Index is {aqi} in {city}\nMembers of sensitve groups may experience health effects"
		print(message)
		send_telegram_alert(message)
		alarm()
	elif (aqi >= 151 and aqi <= 200):
		message = f"Warning! Air Quality Index is {aqi} in {city}\nEveryone may begin to experience health effects."
		print(message)
		send_telegram_alert(message)
		alarm()
	elif (aqi >= 201 and aqi <= 300):
		message = f"Warning! Air Quality Index is {aqi} in {city}\nHealth alert! Everyone may experience more serious health effects."
		print(message)
		send_telegram_alert(message)
		alarm()
	elif (aqi >= 301 and aqi <= 500):
		message = f"Warning! Air Quality Index is {aqi} in {city}\nEmergency! The entire population is more likely to be affected."
		print(message)
		send_telegram_alert(message)
		alarm()
	time.sleep(900)

Credits

Yeshas M P

1 project • 0 followers

code, coffe and contribute

Contact

Thanks to Fred Rivett, AQICN API, CPCB - India Central Pollution Control Board, and World Air Quality Index Project.

Comments

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Air Quality Monitoring System Using Bolt IoT

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Step 1. Hardware Setup

Step 2. Get the Bolt API key and Device ID

Step 3. Setup your environment

Step 4. Let’s create a telegram channel and a bot

Step 5 – Let's create an account and get API token from AQICN

Step 6. Let’s start writing python code

Schematics

Buzzer and Bolt IoT connection

Code

aqi_alert.py

Credits

Yeshas M P

Comments

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Air Quality Monitoring System Using Bolt IoT

Air Quality Monitoring System Using Bolt IoT

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Step 1. Hardware Setup

Step 2. Get the Bolt API key and Device ID

Step 3. Setup your environment

Step 4. Let’s create a telegram channel and a bot

Step 5 – Let's create an account and get API token from AQICN

Step 6. Let’s start writing python code

Schematics

Buzzer and Bolt IoT connection

Code

aqi_alert.py

Credits

Yeshas M P

Comments

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