The Open Cybernetics & Systemics Journal

2014, 8 : 715-720
Published online 2014 December 31. DOI: 10.2174/1874110X01408010715
Publisher ID: TOCSJ-8-715

iGreenhouse: A Case Study for Connecting Physical Devices into Mobile Social Networks

Jiajin Zhang , Qingsong Duan , Ru Shang , Quan Gao , Lichang Chen , Kewei Li and Weisong Kong
School of Mechanic and Electronic Engineering, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming, China.

ABSTRACT

Social networks have become extremely popular in recent years. A new requirement of connecting physical devices into social networks is emerging gradually. In this paper, we propose a case study to explore the effectiveness of connecting devices into mobile social networks for status monitoring and controlling. In our work, we developed iGreenhouse, a greenhouse can post its environment information automatically to the most popular mobile social networks Wechat in China, and Wechat users are able to remotely control the devices in the greenhouse easily.

Experiment results show that our proposed approach is feasible, cost-effective and flexible. Therefore our solution can provide an alternative ubiquitous platform for monitoring and controlling of connected devices.

Keywords:

Social networks, WeChat, greenhouse, wireless sensor and actuator networks.