Advancement of technology brings advantages to human race to certain extent. Unfortunately, some of the technological inventions not only brings advantages, but also disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is the pollution of carbon emission in the environment from the non renewal energy resources. Therefore, to prevent pollution from getting worse, the environmental-friendly aspect is suggested to be included in new inventions nowadays. Thanks to the invention of solar panel, solar energy is able to become a renewable energy source that can be applied to various applications. Considering the increase of electricity consumption every year in Malaysia, solar powered street lighting system is proposed in order to reduce the burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity, hence reducing air pollution. The proposed street lighting is companied with automatic switching mechanism to further reduce the electricity consumption of street lights. The system will also be able to provide energy measurement to determine the efficiency of street light. Security features like motion detection and camera module interfaced to the street light for surveillance monitoring in a residential area to overcome intruders and crime such as theft. Theft is now major issue in Malaysia and in many developing and developed countries. The news reported that many people lost their belongings due snatch theft and averagely 16 people go missing every day. Overall design of the solar powered street lighting systems with the security features will help people live in green and protected environment. The implementations of client server connection and Remote Method Invocation (RMI) in wireless network system ease the monitoring process of the entire street lights in a residential area for giving continuous service to the community and environment.
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Street light is necessary lighting system in many urban areas and in connecting highways. People have difficult vision on the road while driving during night time without street light. In certain areas, street light supports the businesses like night stalls and for people enjoying the night lives and view in cities and parks. Street light symbolizes of safety for many of us because walking at night in brighter place is safer than in a darker place.
There has been decades, where the existence of street light in urban areas. The first most modern street light implemented in Austrian Empire in 1853 (Scott, 1904). The street light is powered with the Kerosene but after some time the carbon arch lights substituted due to the risk of kerosene. The kerosene type of street light caused fire incidences in many places. For example in the year 1880 in New York, two of every five fire incidences are caused by kerosene powered street light (Caponetto, 2008). The carbon arc light has both the carbon-made electrodes and alternative current (AC) power in equal rates. The combination of carbon and AC powered in street light is the most widely used electric type street light and it is named as ‘First City of Light’ in Tamworth, New South Wales in Australia due to the first location to implement the arc lights as the city’s first street lights in 1888 (Liu, 2009). Although the carbon arc street light substituted with Kerosene Street light but it still has its disadvantages. Commonly it is not user friendly because the energy consumption of this type street light is poor therefore high usage of human resource to replace carbon rods, which works for very short period of time. The invention of incandescent light bulb an evolution takes place in street light design. The incandescent light bulb does not required a carbon electrode, just by heating filament in a high temperature with electric current, incandescent light bulb produces light without carbon electrodes. However the incandescent light bulb solves the insufficient of energy consumption in the carbon arc street light but 5% of energy used in visible light, which reduce the efficiency. Therefore, High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights introduced in a street light design and it is widely used in many street light systems (Jherniak, 2012). HPS has high photopic in a least power consumption, which solves the inefficiency issue and hence making it a more reliable than the previous type of street light.
Today, most everything has build in wireless module to connect between things and the users conveniently. Mostly wireless communication service applied in SCADA telemetry control and process control system. The remote control device with infrared enable controls and establishes synchronization between devices in a short range. Global Positioning System (GPS) uses satellite to locate position in a globe. It is now clear that wireless communication changed the impression of telecommunication which is used to be difficult to install, expensive and sophisticated for establishing connection between any devices, human or equipments. Not only that, the wireless communication system changed people’s lifestyle and assured that the possibility to complete a task without extensive travelling. Therefore the wireless communication provides another opportunity for making street lights connected in a network structure for the purpose of managing and improving maintenance service which currently unavailable. Researchers have worked out few frameworks to have street lights connected to wireless communication medium like GPRS or GSM but the implementation costing will be burdening the city municipal council. Nodes are devices with the control mechanism and connectivity medium. Control nodes are implemented with the variety of wireless links such as IEEE 802.15.4, low-power IEEE 802.11, or IEEE 802.15.1 (Bluetooth), which give limited radio range but accepts large number of nodes in a cluster via suitable routing protocols’ (Galperti, 2008). Zigbee (IEEE 802.15.4), WiFi (IEEE 802.11), and Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1) are suitable wireless communication technology for connecting things in an urban area than using GPRS or GSM transmission.