Conventional monitoring systems tend to consist of a control terminal and a controlled terminal, with computers in the control terminal generally linked to the equipment in the controlled terminal through direct wires, such as RS-232 cables, to collect monitoring data and issue commands. Owing to substantial advances in Internet technology in recent years, an increasing number of monitoring systems have been equipped with Internet-based frameworks containing three parts: a user terminal, a server terminal, and a controlled terminal. Users use computers at their terminal. These users log into the system at the server terminal via the Internet to assign monitoring tasks to equipment at the controlled terminal. Users must use a graphical user interface (GUI) in each monitoring system to observe the information collected by the controlled equipment before issuing suitable commands. Interface design is crucial because the information displayed by poorly designed interfaces can lead to judgment errors and erroneous commands, which, in turn, can result in severe losses. Moreover, control personnel require more time to comprehend and manage sudden situations if the monitoring interface requires overly complex operations, which adversely affects the system practicality. Complex monitoring interfaces require more system operation training when personnel changes occur, which increases the costs of factory production and enterprise operations. Thus, the interface design quality is crucial because it influences the convenience and practicality of system usage and development costs.
In many industries that require manual labor, few tasks can be completed using manual labor alone. These tasks include recording the information of all operating machinery, collecting data from operating machinery present in different areas of a factory, and obtaining real-time data from the operating machinery. Therefore, many of these tasks are automated. This has led to the development of many monitoring systems to meet automation requirements in various fields including agriculture [1–3], fisheries [4,5], environmental monitoring [6,7], medical and home automation [8] and factory equipment monitoring [9,10].
Owing to the significance of monitoring interface designs, we categorized the development methods of monitoring interfaces into two types: window applications and web-based approaches. The former method requires a user to install an application to operate various system functions. The user must download an update file when the application is updated, which creates some inconvenience. Previous studies have presented examples of window applications [6–10]. To overcome this problem, recent monitoring systems have been developed using web technology to enable users to perform monitoring tasks by logging into the system via an internet browser [1, 3, 5]. Owing to the presentation of monitoring interfaces, the monitoring webpage designed in Pandey [11] uses pure text to display all monitoring information, which is more suitable for monitoring applications with a small scope and simple data. Previous studies [12–13] have used text, Fig., and tables to present information so that the personnel in charge can observe trends in the monitoring data. However, this method lacks map information pertaining to a monitored scene, which may prevent personnel from rapidly comprehending and managing sudden situations.
The monitoring interface created by Toma [14] presents the pollution information was summarized in various diagrams/dashboards/maps, based on the physical location of the sensors. This method provides a visualized monitoring interface that can effectively aid the personnel involved in determining the relative location of each monitoring point and is extremely useful. However, the monitored scene should be planned in terms of factors such as the image file design and the layout of the sensor nodes before developing this monitoring interface. The completed interface can only be applied to the scene for which it was designed. This approach lacks flexibility for applications in numerous monitored scenes and cannot be updated according to user requirements. Thus, additional manual labor and development costs are incurred.
To address the aforementioned problems in monitoring interface development, we used web technology to develop a mechanism that can establish visualization-monitoring interfaces on demand. Geographic map creation and management functions enable users to upload the floor plans of monitored sites at any time. Moreover, we designed a simulated environment monitoring mechanism to help monitor personnel determine the node locations. The image files of the monitoring nodes corresponding to the actual locations in the monitored scene can be dragged to the corresponding points on the monitoring webpage using a mouse. When the monitored scene or requirements change, the locations of the monitoring nodes on the user interface can be changed.
The monitoring mechanisms designed in this study reduce not only the costs but also the time required for system development and installation. Moreover, this system monitors the physiological information of patients in intensive care units (ICUs) using ZigBee physiological status monitoring devices and presents a two-dimensional virtual scene. Thus, the system enables any doctor to comprehend the conditions of critically ill patients and provide timely and appropriate treatments. Section 2 presents the design concepts, overall architecture, and details of the proposed approach that enable the construction of a simulated graphical monitoring interface on demand. In Section 3, details regarding the application of the proposed approach to the ICU of an actual medical center is presented and the collected data is verified.