MQTT Forest Monitoring System
An IoT sensor monitoring platform with real-time MQTT data streaming and WebSocket-based team chat for forest researchers.
The Problem
Forest research teams deploy Raspberry Pi sensor platforms to monitor environmental conditions, but lack a unified system to collect, visualize, and discuss the data in real-time. They needed a way to stream sensor readings (temperature, humidity, light, images) while enabling team collaboration.
The Solution
Built a dual-protocol IoT system using MQTT for efficient sensor data transmission and WebSockets for real-time team chat. The MQTT publisher sends environmental readings to a HiveMQ broker running in Docker, while web dashboards allow researchers to monitor data streams and communicate simultaneously.
Technical Highlights
- Hierarchical MQTT topic structure (
sensors/{sensor_id}/{data_type}) enabling flexible wildcard subscriptions for filtering by sensor or data type - WebSocket chat server with multi-channel support and persistent message history replay on client join
- Base64-encoded image transmission over MQTT for camera sensor data from Raspberry Pi platforms
Outcome
Delivered a complete IoT monitoring solution that demonstrates proficiency in pub/sub messaging patterns, real-time communication protocols, and containerized broker deployment. The modular architecture supports easy scaling to additional sensors and chat channels.