2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia
Remote Monitoring System based on a Wi-Fi
Controlled Car Using Raspberry Pi
Nazirah Ahmad Zaini, Norliza Zaini, Mohd Fuad Abdul Latip, Nabilah Hamzah
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam, Malaysia
nazirahahmadzaini@gmail.com
Abstract— Developing surveillance and monitoring systems can
be quite challenging at times, since the systems should be
designed with consideration of the environment to be monitored.
Good surveillance systems need to have dynamic features, e.g.
monitoring cameras that are mobile and can move around the
area being monitored. One scenario that requires such mobile
monitoring is the surveillance of a large building with many
levels, which would incur a high cost to install many cameras at
many places. Monitoring such a large area would also be a
challenge for the security officers, as they will need to spend too
much time to patrol covering all places. Other scenarios that
require dynamic surveillance systems include dangerous areas,
e.g. areas with explosion and fire risk, or those contaminated
with toxic gases. Another use case includes areas that cannot be
accessed by humans. To address these challenges, we propose a
dynamic monitoring system based on a moving camera carried
by a Wi-Fi remote controlled car. The remote-controlled (RC)
car is able to move on its own in an area remote from the
operator. Users can be in the next room, the next building, or
even in another country while controlling the movement of the
car via the Internet. Some sensing mechanism is needed to help
the user to locate the current location of the car and effectively
navigate. Thus, the camera that is attached to the car also act like
the eyes showing the frontal view of the car to be seen by the user
via a browser in real-time. This system is using Wi-Fi as the only
communication medium to connect the car to the server. The web
application which provides the interface for the user to interact
with the car also provides live streaming views in the vicinity to
be monitored, i.e. via some other CCTV cameras installed in the
area.
Keywords— Monitoring; Raspberry Pi; RC car; USB
webcams; Wi-Fi.
I. INTRODUCTION
A monitoring and surveillance system is usually designed
and built based on the characteristics of the area to be
monitored. For example, areas that are too dangerous for
humans to operate in require aa dynamic monitoring system to
act in place of a safety officer. This includes areas in which
flammable liquids or gases present in excessive quantities can
easily lead to an explosion or fire. In dangerous places such as
these, installation of equipment and special techniques should
also be designed to avoid potential explosions and fire [1].
Another example scenario requiring dynamic and mobile
monitoring system is an area too small to be accessed by
humans. To monitor such areas, a monitoring system must be
978-1-5090-1181-0/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
small enough to fit in the area and have the ability to move
through small spaces.
Monitoring and surveillance operations in large buildings
also require a dynamic control system. A large building is
usually monitored by a team of security officers. There may be
times in which some of the team will leave the control room to
patrol from one level to another. Assuming that the time to
patrol any one level is about five minutes, if the building has
more than 20 levels, it would take about an hour to complete a
patrol round on all levels. In addition, patrols also need to be
repeated throughout the day. In this scenario, the advent of a
dynamic and mobile surveillance system may lead to a more
efficient process. Security officers may not need to leave the
control room because they can virtually patrol on many
different levels at any one time via several monitors in the
control room.
Concerning the scenarios described above, in this paper we
present a mobile monitoring prototype employed on a Wi-Fi
remote-controlled (RC) car. The RC car is driven by a
Raspberry Pi and remotely controlled by the user via the
Internet. The user is provided an interface via the browser to
view the live video captured by the camera attached to the car.
A control panel is also provided, allowing the user to remotely
control the movement of the car. The live video streaming from
the camera provides a dynamic surveillance view, which can
be moved around the area to get a closer look of the current
suspicious event. In general, this prototype exploits the concept
of Internet of Things (IoT), where the RC car will be controlled
via the web by the user, while the transmission of data from the
car will be sent via the wireless network to the online server.
Other related systems are described in [15-17]. [15]
presents an RC car that can be controlled by a computer via a
parallel port. The commands used to control the RC car are
inclusive of voice and facial commands. [16] presents an RC
car designed on Arduino microcontroller and controlled by
smart phone running an Android application. In this project,
the RC car is meant to be used in search mission in the
occurrence of natural disaster. [17] presents on a robotic
vehicle that be controlled via Internet for surveillance purpose.
The surveillance vehicle can be maneuvered via keyboard. The
vehicle is also mounted with robotic arm, which can be used to
help pick and move objects whenever necessary.
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 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia
II. SYSTEM OVERVIEW
An overview of the prototype design will first be presented
followed by some details on the proposed algorithm. For
connection to the server, the system will rely on a Wi-Fi
network which allows data to be transferred to and from the
Raspberry Pi to the web server. The Wi-Fi allows the RC car to
access the Internet at broadband speeds once connected to an
access point (AP), or in ad hoc mode [14]. Wi-Fi has been
chosen over Bluetooth since Wi-Fi have all specifications
needed for this system. For instance, Wi-Fi allows some
security measure to be imposed if needed, e.g. a user that is not
connected to the same network, as the Pi will not be able to
control the RC car via the web interface. This project is limited
to an area that has network coverage only and the camera used
can only provide frontal views.
A. System Architecture
In this project, the main hardware components running on
the RC car were connected as shown in Fig.1. These include
the Raspberry Pi, USB Webcam, Wi-Fi Dongle, L298 Dual H
Bridge Motor Controller, and RC Car. Each component is
illustrated in Fig 1.
Fig. 1: System Block Diagram
1) Raspberry Pi: The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card
sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV and
uses a standard keyboard and mouse [2]. Despite its small
size, Raspberry Pi is capable of many big things and operates
like a desktop computer, allowing browsing the Internet,
playing video games and word processing. However, unlike
other controllers, which are compatible with almost every
programming language, Raspberry Pi uses several high-level
languages such as Scratch and Python.
Fig. 2: Features offered by Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
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For this prototype, Raspberry Pi is chosen over other
controller such as Arduino due to its higher performance and
specifications, which allows more computation-intensive
applications to be deployed. For this prototype, the model used
is Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. Fig. 2 shows the features offered
by Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. This model comprises a 900MHz
quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU and 1GB RAM with 4 USB
ports, GPIO pins, full HDMI port, Ethernet port, a combined
3.5mm audio jack and composite video, camera interface
(CSI), display interface (DSI), Micro SD card slot and
VideoCore IV 3D graphics core [1].
The Pi is attached the RC car especially to enable live video
streaming from the camera and remote control of the car
movement via the Internet. The Pi will be connected onto the
same network as the monitor and the output will be shown in
the web browser.
2) The Camera: The camera used for this prototype is a
USB webcam [5], which is connected to the Raspberry Pi.
Prior to camera installation, the chosen USB webcam model is
checked against the list of Raspberry Pi compatible USB
webcam to ensure that it will work well with the Pi [3].
Having the camera attached to the Pi will allow the captured
real-time footage to be streamed by the Pi onto the Internet via
Wi-Fi connection. The real-time live video is streamed via a
web interface for the user to view e.g. for surveillance or to
remotely control the car movement.
3) Wi-Fi Connection: To allow Wi-Fi connection, two
models of Wi-Fi Dongle are explored for this prototype:
Wireless N 150 USB Adapter and TL-WN727N USB
Adapter. Wi-Fi dongles enable Raspberry Pi to connect either
automatically or manually to any Wi-Fi assigned by the user.
A USB webcam, as with the Wi-Fi dongle, must also be
compatible with the Raspberry Pi. A list of compatible
dongles is taken from [4].
4) RC car Motor Controller: For controlling the RC car
movement, L298 Dual H Bridge motor controller is used,
specifically to control motors speed and direction. The
controller can also be used for other purpose such as driving
the brightness of lights, e.g. a high-powered LED array [6].
5) Power Supply: Raspberry Pi can be powered from a 5V
micro USB supply, where the amount of current needed is
dependent on the type(s) of component(s) connected to the
Raspberry Pi. However, the ideal amount of current to run the
Raspberry Pi is 1.2 Ampere [2]. For this prototype, the power
supply used is a Pineng Power Bank, providing 2 amps and
5V. A fully charged power bank is able to support the
Raspberry Pi for approximately about 1 day and 4 hours (28
hours).
6) Radio Controlled (RC) car: For this project, the RC car
used has dimensions of 18cm x 11cm x 10cm, scale of 1:24. It
requires 3 AA batteries and has 2 motors that control the
forward, backward, left and right movements.
 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia

7) Raspbian Jessie OS: The Raspbian OS is chosen to run the car controller interface, which continuously waits for the
the Raspberry Pi. Raspbian is an unofficial port of Debian commands from the user. Based on the commands given by the
Wheezy with compilation settings adjusted to produce user, the system will react accordingly.
optimized “hard float” code that will run on the Raspberry Pi.
This provides significantly faster performance for applications
that make heavy use of floating point arithmetic operations.
Although Raspbian is primarily the efforts of Mike Thompson
(mpthompson) and Peter Green (plugwash), it has also
benefited greatly from the enthusiastic support of Raspberry Pi
community members desiring maximum performance from
their devices [7]. The Raspberry Pi is installed with Raspbian
Jessie as its operating system.
8) Python: Other special features of Raspbian Jessie include
updates of several of the applications that ship with Raspbian.
There are new versions of Scratch, Sonic Pi, and the Epiphany
web browser and also built-in Python applications. Therefore,
Python users can access the file without the having to install
anything [11]. Python is a clear and powerful object-oriented
programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or
Java, the syntax is very clean, with an emphasis on readability.
It uses standard English keywords. In this project, a Python
program will be used to transfer the data from GPIO pins all
the way to the motor of the RC Car.
B. Overall Activity Flow
Fig. 4: Web Interface Flow Chart
The overall activity flow of the system running on the
Raspberry Pi can be divided into several steps, as shown in Fig.
D. Hardware and Software Design
3. Once the Raspberry Pi is turned on, the Pi will search for
Wi-Fi access and automatically connect to the assigned Wi-Fi. Fig. 5 shows the connection between the RC car and the
The USB webcam will then automatically start to capture real- Raspberry Pi. The RC car consists of two motors, which
time video. The captured videos will first be compressed and control the front wheels; turn left or turn right, and the back
sent to the web server for live streaming. At the same time, the wheels; moving forward or backward. L298N H-Bridge is used
Pi will also wait for remote commands or input from the user to to control both motors on the RC Car. The RC car uses 3 AA
control the movement of the RC car. batteries as its power source. In this project, the power source
used will be separated for both L298N and the Pi. However, it
is possible to power up both L298N and Raspberry Pi
controller using one source. The connection between the RC
car and the L298N H Bridge is shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 3: Overall Activity Flow (Raspberry Pi)

C. Web Interface Flowchart

Fig. 4 shows a flow chart of the web interface of the
system. Once the web interface is accessed, the user will be
prompted to log in. Upon successful authentication, the user
will be directed to a web browser displaying the live videos Fig. 5: Circuit Diagram showing connections between RC car and Raspberry
from the RC car’s camera. The user will also be provided with Pi

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 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia

This prototype offers one special feature, where the user is

Fig. 6: Connection between RC car and L298N H Bridge
III. SYSTEM SETUP
This section presents on the setup and configuration works
done to integrate all components together. Snapshots of the
outputs are also shown following correct integration.
A. Raspberry Pi Setup
To set up the Raspberry Pi, several devices are essential to
ensure that every function is working perfectly for the first
time booting [2]. Table I comprises of the essential devices for
Raspberry Pi first booting. Fig. 7 shows on the first Pi booting
for the project.
allowed either to remotely control the unit via the Pi from
anywhere or only from the same network as the Pi. There are a
few methods that can be used to allow this feature. To allow
user to access the Pi from anywhere, port forwarding may be
set-up by configuring the router to forward all inbound traffic
from the Internet on a specific port to the local IP address of
the Raspberry Pi. Most routers have this feature available.
However, each router has a different configuration. One
disadvantage of port forwarding is that it exposes a network
port on the private LAN to the public Internet. This is a known
security vulnerability and must be managed carefully [8].
To allow access only from the same network, the Pi will be
installed with Weaved App to enable a locally connected user
to connect and access the Pi via SSH. Weaved is software
installed on the Raspberry Pi that allows connection between Pi
with any device from anywhere over the Internet. SSH, VNC,
HTTP, SFTP file transfer and any other TCP service running
on Pi can be enabled for secure remote access over the Internet
without port forwarding [8]. Fig. 9 shows that once Weaved is
installed on the Pi, it can be accessed from weaved.com on the
Internet.

TABLE I. COMPONENTS NEEDED DURING THE FIRST BOOT FOR

RASPBERRY PI
Devices Details

SD Card It is recommended to use at least 8GB class as the

card will be installed with the Raspbian Image
HDMI/DV Work as a display for the Pi. HDMI input will be the
Input best result.
Keyboard Any standard USB Keyboard and Mouse will work
Fig. 7: Raspberry Pi during first boot
and Mouse perfectly.
Power Supply Pi is powered using USB Micro power supply that
gives at least 2A at 5V. Lower current like 700mA
will work for basic usage. However, Pi will reboot if
the power is drawing too much.
Ethernet Used to connect PI to a local network and the Internet
Cable
Audio Lead Unnecessary if not using any audio

B. Wi-Fi Configuration
The Pi was configured to connect automatically to the
selected Wi-Fi network. To enable such Wi-Fi configuration,
two files, specifically the network interface and WPA
supplicant file, were edited using the script editor. This project Fig. 8: Raspberry Pi connected to Wi-Fi network
uses a nano script editor, i.e. GNU Nano, which is an easy-to-
use end of command line editors. In addition, the Pi is also C. Camera Installation
configured to have its own IP Address. Fig. 8 shows the To enable the live streaming video, the USB Webcams will
successful connection of the Pi with the Wi-Fi network. be installed with Motion, which is a program that monitors the

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 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia
video signal from cameras. It is able to detect if a significant
part of the picture has changed; in other words, it can detect
motion. The output generated by Motion can be configured as
JPG files, PPM format files or MPEG video sequences [9].
After all configuration has been done, the live video
streaming can be accessed directly via a web link through the
browser. Fig. 10 shows a live video streaming accessed via a
web browser. In this project, the image resolution used is the
default resolution, which is 320px width and 240px height. To
increase the quality of the camera, MJPG Streamer can be
installed and used [9]. Nonetheless, the framerate must be set
correctly or the video will stream much too fast. Another way
is to troubleshoot the criteria of the video by lowering the
frame rate, adjusting the size of the video, and using a higher-
quality web camera.
Fig. 9: Successful login to the weaved.com website
Fig. 10: Live video streaming via a web browser on port 8008
D. Programming using Python Scripting
Scripting can be done using either nano editor or the GUI
interface. Fig. 11 shows on how the scripting is done using
nano scripting. Extra care should be imposed when writing the
program, especially to ensure that the pin written to is the
same as the pin connected. Additional tools that can be used
include WiringPi, which is a GPIO access library written in C
for the BCM2835 used in the Raspberry Pi. WiringPi includes
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a command-line utility GPIO that can be used to program and
set up the GPIO pins and to read and write the pins. It may
even be used to exercise control from shell scripts [13].
E. Web Interfacing
To allow access for the video live streaming and RC car
controller, the web is designed using the HTML language. The
overall web interface can be seen as in Fig. 12. WebIOPi can
be used in addition to a web browser. WebIOPi is a web
application that allows user to control the GPIO pins directly.
However, support for Raspberry Pi 2 Model is not stable yet,
leading to some technical problems. This issue reinforces the
decision to choose a web browser over WebIOPi [14].
Fig. 11: Editing Python Script using GNU Nano Editor
Fig. 12: The complete web interface accessed from a mobile phone
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Prototype development work has been carried out with an
RC car which provides live video streaming that can be used
for surveillance purposes and is remotely controlled via the
Internet. The RC car is driven by a Raspberry Pi, which has a
Wi-Fi access to communicate with a web server. The Pi is
attached with a USB webcam to provide live video streaming.
 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia
A motor controller is also attached to the Pi to control the
movement of the RC car. A web interface was created to
provide both live video streaming and RC controller panel for
the user. Via this interface, the user is able to watch the live
video while navigating the area by remotely controlling the
car’s movement. For power supply, the Pi is connected with a
37 wh power bank that delivers 5v and 2.1a, while the RC car
is powered up by 3 AA batteries.
For local access authorization, a test was carried out in
which an unauthorized locally connected user was unable to
access the live streaming and did not have the ability to control
the RC Car. Such users are directed to an error web page
showing unauthorized access. In another test case, the RC car
could only be controlled by an authorized user with correct id
and password, with the ability to access the web browser
regardless of their location, as long as the Pi has been powered
on.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper presents the development work of remote
monitoring prototype system using a Wi-Fi controlled RC car
driven by a Raspberry Pi. The different hardware components
and their assembly were described and a few studies were
conducted to explore ways on how the components can be
integrated to communicate with a web interface. The camera
acts as the viewer, either to provide surveillance view or to
guide the user while remotely navigating the car. The web
interface enables live streaming video, while the user is
provided with the navigation controller panel to allow control
of the RC car movement.
With a fully functional prototype, this project may be used
for monitoring purposes in a building, in a hazardous area and
other such locations. Several improvements can be made to
enhance the capability of the project. For example, the camera
maybe upgraded to a higher-quality camera to boost the quality
of live streaming.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to extend our acknowledgement to
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) and to those who have
directly and indirectly contributed to our project. This research
is funded by the Synergised Industry-Experimenter Research
Grant Initiative, Universiti Teknologi MARA (600-
IRMI/DANA 5/3/SINERGI (0003/2016)).
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