Smart Temple IoT: Crowd Monitoring and Donation Counter

India’s temples attract millions of devotees and managing crowd safety, donations, and facility maintenance is a significant challenge. IoT technology can help temple trusts monitor crowd density for safety, digitise donation counting, and maintain heritage structures — all while respecting the sacred environment.

IoT for Religious Institutions

Smart Temple IoT: Crowd Monitoring and Donation Counter is an important IoT application with growing adoption in India. The convergence of affordable microcontrollers like ESP32, low-cost sensors, and open-source cloud platforms makes this technology accessible to individual makers and small businesses alike.

Key benefits include:

• Real-time monitoring: Track critical parameters 24/7 without manual intervention
• Data-driven decisions: Use historical data and trends to make informed choices
• Cost reduction: Automate monitoring tasks and prevent expensive failures
• Scalability: Start with one node and expand to hundreds as needed

Crowd Monitoring and Safety

This section covers the core technical details of crowd monitoring and safety for your smart temple iot project. Understanding these fundamentals ensures a robust and reliable implementation.

Key considerations include:

• Reliability: Design for 24/7 operation with watchdog timers and automatic recovery
• Accuracy: Calibrate sensors against known references before deployment
• Maintenance: Plan for periodic sensor cleaning and battery replacement
• Documentation: Document wiring, configuration, and calibration values

Digital Donation Counter

This section covers the core technical details of digital donation counter for your smart temple iot project. Understanding these fundamentals ensures a robust and reliable implementation.

Key considerations include:

• Reliability: Design for 24/7 operation with watchdog timers and automatic recovery
• Accuracy: Calibrate sensors against known references before deployment
• Maintenance: Plan for periodic sensor cleaning and battery replacement
• Documentation: Document wiring, configuration, and calibration values

Environment and Heritage Preservation

This section covers the core technical details of environment and heritage preservation for your smart temple iot project. Understanding these fundamentals ensures a robust and reliable implementation.

Key considerations include:

• Reliability: Design for 24/7 operation with watchdog timers and automatic recovery
• Accuracy: Calibrate sensors against known references before deployment
• Maintenance: Plan for periodic sensor cleaning and battery replacement
• Documentation: Document wiring, configuration, and calibration values

Queue Management

This section covers the core technical details of queue management for your smart temple iot project. Understanding these fundamentals ensures a robust and reliable implementation.

Key considerations include:

• Reliability: Design for 24/7 operation with watchdog timers and automatic recovery
• Accuracy: Calibrate sensors against known references before deployment
• Maintenance: Plan for periodic sensor cleaning and battery replacement
• Documentation: Document wiring, configuration, and calibration values

Building the System

Follow these steps to build your smart temple iot project:

#include 
#include 

const char* ssid = "YOUR_WIFI";
const char* password = "YOUR_PASSWORD";
const char* mqtt_server = "YOUR_MQTT_BROKER";

WiFiClient espClient;
PubSubClient client(espClient);

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
  while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
    delay(500);
    Serial.print(".");
  }
  Serial.println("nWiFi connected");

  client.setServer(mqtt_server, 1883);
  while (!client.connected()) {
    client.connect("iot-node-01");
    delay(2000);
  }
  Serial.println("MQTT connected");
}

void loop() {
  // Read sensor data
  float sensorValue = readSensor();

  // Publish to MQTT
  char payload[64];
  snprintf(payload, sizeof(payload),
    "{"value":%.2f,"device":"node-01"}", sensorValue);
  client.publish("iot/smart/temple/iot", payload);

  client.loop();
  delay(30000); // Every 30 seconds
}

float readSensor() {
  // Replace with your actual sensor reading code
  return analogRead(34) * 0.01;
}

Upload this code using Arduino IDE or PlatformIO. Ensure you have installed the PubSubClient and WiFi libraries.

Smart Temple Implementations in India

This technology has significant applications across Indian sectors:

• Smart Cities: Under the Smart Cities Mission, 100 Indian cities are deploying IoT infrastructure
• Agriculture: India’s 140 million farming families can benefit from data-driven monitoring
• Manufacturing: Make in India initiative drives Industry 4.0 adoption
• Healthcare: IoT-enabled monitoring improves care quality in India’s hospitals
• Education: STEM learning with real IoT projects in schools and colleges

The cost advantage of ESP32-based solutions makes them particularly suitable for the Indian market, where enterprise IoT solutions are often too expensive for SMEs and individual applications.

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