Given the lack of investments in surveillance in remote places, this paper presents a prototype that identifies vehicles in irregular conditions, notifying a group of people, such as a network of neighbors, through a low-cost embedded system based on the Internet of things (IoT). The developed prototype allows the visualization of the location, date and time of the event, and vehicle information such as license plate, make, model, color, city, state, passenger capacity and restrictions. It also offers a responsive interface in two languages: Portuguese and English. The proposed device addresses technical concepts pertinent to image processing such as binarization, analysis of possible characters on the plate, plate border location, perspective transformation, character segmentation, optical character recognition (OCR) and post-processing. The embedded system is based on a Raspberry having support to GPS, solar panels, communication via 3G modem, wi-fi, camera and motion sensors. Tests were performed regarding the vehicle’s positioning and the percentage of assertiveness in image processing, where the vehicles are at different angles, speeds and distances. The prototype can be a viable alternative because the results were satisfactory concerning the recognition of the license plates, mobility and autonomy.

The traditional metering system of water meters, through human readers, although still widely used by companies that provide water service, tends to become an increasingly unviable process over the years, due to urban growth. With the objective of finding a solution to this question, this paper presents the development of a prototype to monitor water consumption and an application that allows the end user to visualize his consumption. For the prototype, it was used the NodeMCU module, because of it being a low-cost device, along with a Wisol WSSFM10R2 Breakout module, which allows communication through the Sigfox network, considered an alternative network for IoT communications, using simple AT commands, besides the Sigfox company provide all the architecture for the developer. The present work also discusses about how the Sigfox hardware and network works, explaining the pulse conversion processes emitted by the flow and pressure sensors, as well as the use of the NodeMCU module for control and sending of messages through the Sigfox network. In general, the prototype obtained a satisfactory result in relation to the calculation of water consumption, reaching accuracy rates above 90% in tests that used the values returned by both sensors in constant flows and an average accuracy rate of around 99% for tests with varied flows, where it has been proven that the use of the pressure sensor optimizes the consumption calculation.