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Extreme weather has become a significant source of disasters in the 21st century.

Disastrous events such as extreme weather and global warming are on the rise worldwide, causing many negative impacts not only on society and the economy，  but also posing a great threat and damage to people's lives.

In daily life, people pay attention to weather changes for preventing epidemics, as catching a cold is easy when it rains or cools down suddenly.For agricultural production, it is necessary to adjust the planting method regularly according to the weather.

Weather forecast is the science of prediction, which cannot be completely or always accurate, from the perspective of scientific rules.The incorrect weather forecast information can affect people's judgment of weather types and disaster levels, which can lead to damage.

Improving the accuracy of weather forecasting is still a worldwide challenge.

In such a condition, many companies and engineers choose M5Stack to set up a customised small weather monitor stations to get more accurate weather data they want.

On 2022.9.18, Typhoon No. 14, considered the strongest typhoon on record, made landfall on the Satsuma Peninsula in Kyushu, Japan.

It was great to be able to monitor through the webcam. I can see what's happening at my parents' house and outside, including my parents’ condition, so I feel very relieved." Yoshihiro Shimoyama, who is in Saitama, felt very grateful and relieved on this typhoon day.

Yoshihiro Shimoyama is the president of ergo, a Japanese IT consulting company. To facilitate the care of his parents, he built a weather monitor system at his parents' home in Kagoshima City, using M5Stack's Core2, StickC, human sensor (PIR HAT), environmental sensor (ENV UNIT) and M5Camera to monitor the safety of the elderly, collect environmental data and simply control the home. Shimoyama used the Arduino IDE to program, set up M5StickC to transfer data to the MQTT broker every five minutes, stored the data in the PostgreSQL database, and finally edited the data on Rmenu to display visualized graphs.

The remote monitoring display graph around 19:00 on 2022.9.18. The purple line shows the change of air pressure(Photo: Shimoyama Yoshihiro)

The monitoring display graph is divided into three sections. The first part has five columns of data. The first column shows the number of responses from the human sensor at each time of day, which detects whether the elderly person is up and moving, and Shimoyama can contact the elderly person and the local caregiver if there are any abnormalities to prevent accidents occur; the second column shows the weather data of the surrounding area obtained from the weather information service; the third column shows the temperature, humidity and air pressure in the room;The fourth and fifth columns contain the temperature and humidity data at the head and feet of the bed where the elderly person sleeps. The second section is a row of gauges, the eight gauges showing the data uploaded by the M5StickC placed in the kitchen. The line graph in the third section is a visual view of the corresponding kitchen environment data.

The five cameras, installed both indoors and outdoors, provide live video of the elderly and the situation of the home.

The surroundings of parents' house, taken by M5Camera on 2022.9.28 at 19:04(Photo: Shimoyama Yoshihiro)

Besides such extreme weather, this remote monitoring system gives Yoshihiro Shimoyama, who is away from home, a lot of convenience and security in his daily life. In normal times, as it is not convenient to watch the monitoring data all the time, the M5Core2 in Mr. Shimoyama's hands is set up with an alert function and a vibration function. Even if there is movement at night, the human sensor at home senses his parents' movement and transmits it to the device, thus he can feel his parents' activities at all times, as if the family is living together. Even when he is away, with a pocket WIFI connection, Mr. Shimoyama can receive alerts from his parents' home by carrying the Core2 with him.

The M5Camera will not only take daily photos of the medication calendar on the wall of his parents' home and send it to Mr. Shimoyama at breakfast time so that he can check and remind them to take their medication, but also have the  AI function to intelligently monitor his home for any major abnormal changes and send alerts in time.

"Parental care has become necessary since April 2020, but COVID-19 brings all sorts of restrictions. This remote monitoring system has been instrumental in caring for my parents and I am very grateful." Mr Shimoyama said. He started to build this system May 2020, adding features to it layer by layer downhill over two years.

Initial remote monitoring system overview(Photo: Hiroyoshi Sudo)

M5Stack recently launched a development board designed for IoT education. It helps teach developers how to carry out experiments and conduct research. Until now, there hasn’t been a similar product on the market offering all the learning possibilities of M5Stacks' Dev Board. 

The board is a combination of all of their previous top-ranked products. It’s fully open-sourced and entirely compatible with other related products, making it the holy grail for IoT development by opening up endless possibilities. 

M5Stack doesn’t follow, and that was clear from their first product on. They’re committed to a mission of opening the world of IoT to the future generation of makers, encouraging innovation.

The new product is aimed at seasoned students and researchers that already have some coding background, in order to understand the principles and basic functioning schemes. For those that are hungry to test and discover new IoT products, this development board is a wonderful tool. It’s great for B2B platforms that are looking for heavy duty IoT development boards in the “all-in-one” format.

M5Stack believes in building the next generation of IoT developers. To make it more tangible, they went all in by creating an IoT Lab in a college in Chinas Anhui province.  All the hardware and software, including a training platform and robotic vehicles, were supplied by M5Stack.

M5Stack is also developing a channel to regularly provide STEM-related videos. The channel will offer inspiration, education, and guidance to the young generation of IoT developers so they can have a full circle support system, from software to hardware. They aim to become a reliable source to count on when makers get stuck or need guidance.

Armed with M5’s new development board, makers can bring to life their most ambitious projects. 

It will allow them to create smart devices that will make our lives easier, add convenience, save energy, make our homes and offices more efficient and improve our quality of life. Somewhere, a bright developer has already in mind the next big thing in IoT and only waiting for the right tool to build it, test it, and bring it into the world.

M5Stack encourages developers worldwide to try their development board and see where their imagination takes them.

Article from Dzone by Tim Spann