I am about to start a new project (haven’t quite finished the first project) but it is well on its way.
This is another curling related project. This time I wanted to monitor playing time by each team. Right now in competive games, each game has a manual time keeper that monitors the time used up be each team. This is a monotonous job and it is difficult to get volunteers to do it and do it correctly.
What I need is way for multiple stones each with a unique ID communicate that information to a central server that would display the time left to play for each team.
The playing surface is about 150ft long and 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 120 ft wide (depending on the number of lanes at the facility).
I need for the handles to be able to communicate with a central server of the area of play. What wireless technology should I consider? Each handle would be battery powered but if I use a lipo, it could be recharged every few days or on a weekly basis.
The only information that would be communciated to the server would be the. The time the stone crosses the first and third magnetic strip. This would give me the time the stone is sliding down the ice, and, by difference, the amount of time the teams “think about” what shot to actually throw.
I’m going to be a bit forward thinking and give a qualified answer of BlueTooth LE (or Smart, as I think it’s now called). It’s a subset of BT 4.0 and is now supported by Android and iPhones and PCs. Meaning you shouldn’t have to build a receiver. It’s intended usage is for short intermittent messages. Range up to 100m. Transmitters are just becoming common …
I note the IC used above is ~$3 in qty. And Nordic sells a whole SoC (?meaning no Arduino needed?) combining the above w/ARM Cortex M0 for the same $$s. I’ve yet to see a BoB or dev board based on one. Alas the BLEduino seems to have gone dead …
You and I have projects looking for a low cost, small and fairly simple processing-wise “device”. Either SoC’s might fill the bill. The latter seems to have got all the attention due to the whole IoT craze. I was going BLE but with the “community” tilting towards the ESP8266 … :?
The anardiuno is a cool project except it’s not WiFi. The ESP8266 is really what the community has been waiting for which explains the explosive popularity. IMHO it isn’t an IMP killer per se but rather a well positioned product for the huge void in the WiFi hacker arena. There will still be space for IMPs; connected launchpads and even the legacy WiFi shields for Arduino and other boards.
Not WiFi indeed. But WiFi tends to consume a lot more battery current, costs more for telemetry (so far), and has a 20MHz wide RF channel which is not well suited to low rate telemetry.
The Anarduino Mini-wireless boards have the AVR mega328, 16MB of SPI flash for data logging, a clock/calendar chip, and a sub-GHz data radio that (I and others) run at 125Kbps or less. For $15.50. A mega1284 version (16K RAM) is due any day. Th radiohead stack makes it easy.
But, may will pay the power and price to use WiFi. Maybe someday WiFi for IoT will be a $4 FCC certified module. We’ve been waiting a very long time.