Hi, I need some advice, I have a arduino uno. I am planning on connecting some sensors to it, and ultimately I would like to have this placed online.
My current thinking is that I would use an rf xbee (arduino is going to be placed at bottom of garden so out of range of WiFi). The arduino would send data via this xbee. The bit I am not sure of is how the PC would collect and process this data. If I had second xbee how would this connect to PC and how could the data be retrieved and posted on line?
I appreciate this is very high level, but any ideas / comments very appreciated.
Yes, what Steve said. Start with some simpler projects that build up to this one.
And even when you get to this one keep the XBees out and use a direct connection from thw Arduino to the PC to get the sensor reading the data transfer code workking. Only after that step connect the XBees for a wireless link.
Well after a bit of head scratching finally got my prototype working. As a reminder the end goal was to stick some sensors in the garden and somehow get the data logged on to Internet where I could view them on any internet enabled device.
Ingredients:
1 x Uno
1 x wireless SD shield
2 x Series 1 RF Xbee’s
1 Xbee USB adapter
So first stick one Xbee into the USB adapter and connect to PC. Then stick the shield on the Uno and then stick other Xbee into the shield. Make sure the micro switch on the shield is set to USB. I then used X-CTU to configure the Xbee network settings. At this point I had two Xbee’s that could communicate to each other
I then built a very simple breadboard setup that basically used a temp sensor and wired this up to the Uno.
At this point I disconnected the Uno from USB (and changed the micro switch back to non usb) and connected a battery to run it. I then used X-CTU to confirm that it was sending data, which it was.
The next problem was how to get my PC to process the data that was being received from the Xbee connected to the PC’s USB port. I achieved this by creating a very simple Windows Service that monitors COM4 for incoming transmissions. When it detects one it simply performs a post to the google form that I set up and that’s it.
I can then view this google spreadsheet from anywhere with any device.
Now I have working concept next step to make it deployable and more robust.
Happy to provide more details if anybody is trying to reach the same sort of goal.
You could do a detailed write-up and assembly instructions with cute little pictures, and post the code so our beginners can use it to learn. For the write-up, you should post a new thread though.