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Technology

Remote Telemetry With Your PC? 86

hyacinthus asks: "For some projects I'm working on, I'd like a system for acquiring data (as from the output of an instrumentation amplifier) from a module that would be separate from a PC, a maximum distance of perhaps several hundred feet at most, and the use of cable or wire is not an option. My bandwidth requirements are very small--perhaps a hundred 12-bit samples per second would do it. I would like the data acquisition module to be as small as possible. And I'd like the possibility of acquiring data from more than one module, rather like a multiple-channel data acquisition system." Are there any radio-based PC products that can be adapted to suit this sort of task?

"Commercial data acquisition products for personal computers all tend to be rather spendy, and none that I've seen make any provision for wireless telemetry. I've been considering designing and building something, probably using one of the commercial available USB development kits (see, for example, ActiveWire's USB board). But I'm no electrical engineer (a few digital design classes and some self-teaching from Horowitz and Hill, and that's it), so I'd like to ask if there's anything out there which does what I want."

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Remote Telemetry with a PC?

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  • check out the guerrilla.net project(formerly at the l0pht, now at http://205.159.169.11/ ) They had something about using old soundblaster cards and amateur radio on there...... C
  • I'm Sure X10 [x10.com] has a device or two that could be hacked up or already fits your purpose.
  • by xtal ( 49134 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @03:26PM (#595232)

    There's a bunch of solutions out there if you want to be a little crafty, and most of it is just limited by how much you want to spend and how reliable you need the data transfer to be (as you can guess.. the two are linked :).

    A couple people have suggested a laser link. I built a small one for experimenting using a UART and some of the schematics from the book Lasers, -Ray Guns & Light Cannons ISBN: 0-07-045035-8. (Someone better buy it because I had to dig through two years of crap to find it! :) I got the lasers from some surplus place cheap. It worked well at 2400 baud or something like that, I was trying to build a circuit to act as a wireless point-to-point link to get high speed internet just slightly off campus (e.g. through my lab window to a buddy across the street :). It worked well, although I ran out of time to finish it. Think I was planning on selling them to build cheap point-to-point links at the time, or something. Hard to aim, though. Anyhow.

    Another way is through wireless modules like the folks at Lynx Technologies or Parallax Inc [parallaxinc.com]. The parallax ones are of better quality right out of the box, and they'll sell to individuals, the former was nasty to me when I wanted to order some samples.

    YET another way is through using Ham Radio and packet. You can get an all - in - one unit from Kenwood [kenwood.net] called the TH-D7A that is a small handheld with a 9600 baud TNC built into it. It's truely plug-and-play. Extremely expensive at $550cdn a pop, I know, I have one. You also need to be liscened to operate at these frequencies, and most/all places won't sell you one without your callsign or liscence. These work VERY well.

    That said, one of those options will be the best for you. IR is out as it doesn't work worth a damn in direct sunlight, even laser detectors have a bit of a problem with sun. Sun is a great source of optical noise :). If I was needing something mission critical and a long distance, your best choice is the kenwood/packet option, or maybe the parallax modules. They hook right up to a serial port.

    Alternately, you could just get a cheap 486 notebook and get a 802.11 card, and wire the whole thing to a big-ass car battery (find one that takes 12V, and make sure to put a fuse on it!). That might be cheaper in the long run, and will provide a lot of bandwidth.

    Hope that helps.

  • by jfunk ( 33224 ) <jfunk@roadrunner.nf.net> on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @05:39PM (#595233) Homepage
    This is all well and good for a hobbyist. In fact, there's quite a bit of Linux software for doing instrumentation this way.

    If your application is professional or you want dead accuracy, please do not do this. How calibrated is that input amp? How about noise? What if you have to manually calibrate?

    If you must use a laptop, NI sells some cool PCMCIA cards for this sort of use. Expect to pay for it, though.

    That said, I'll have to mention that any x86 is probably overkill. I'd likely use a PIC and some choice Analog Devices chips. They are dirt cheap, and would be much easier to make immune to noise. You can control the whole design, which is a good thing. The less bloat, the less chance of interference.

    For extremely critical apps, you'd probably end up doing some expensive testing, but you'd end up doing that for anything off-the-shelf anyway.

    As for the data transport, if the speed isn't critical, you could do this [microchip.com]. Just pick a frequency that you can use freely and make sure that nothing else around will interfere with the signal.

    There are also a lot of other ways to do it. Radio is cheap to do, and more fault-tolerant than IR.

    Look around, you might find something else.
  • If you're into electronics at all you would be crazy not to be a regular Circuit Cellar magazine reader. They have the kinds of articles perfect for the hardware/software hacker. In issue #113 from December 1999 they had a feature article on a Poisson network.

    Basically it's a one-way RF network where each sensor (doesn't really matter what kind) has a cheap RF transmitter and a uC. They're using a Poisson distribution to create pseudo-random transmission intervals for each sensor, so that the likehood of collisions is minimized, since there's no network master, only a receiver that aggregates all valid transmissions it receives. The nice thing is that the per-node cost can be extremely low, depending on what kind of sensor you have.

    Email me if you want some more details or some help on getting your hands on the article.
  • I have done this a few times with the robotics team from my school. The best way to do this is with an RS232 radio. We have used differing brands and qualities (from $2000 to $75). The expensive one was from Motorola and was high baud, two-way, and came in a nice protective shell. It also had a long range. The cheaper one also worked fine, but it was necessary to build a protective case for it, and its range was shorter. It may also have been one-way (unidirectional).

    I have to say that this is your best bet, because it doesn't rely on line of sight, doesn't mess with 802.11, and is cheap. Also, because RS232 is the standard for many types of telemetry, it will most likely work with whatever data-gathering equipment you use. It is up to you which model and quality to use, based on your budget and other requirements.

    You might check http://tflow.com/boards.html [tflow.com] (bottom of page) for a start -- they have prices on their page. These prices are about what to expect anywhere you go. We, however, went through ABACOM Technologies [abacom-tech.com] when we got one of our radios (the cheaper, but very functional one). Their webpage is somewhat substandard, so you might not find the RS232 radios on it. I know that they sell them though, and you can call them asking for P/N RTcomTx-RS232 (Transmitter - $87.15 canadian) and RTcomRx-RS232 or (Reciever - $105.52 canadian). There are tons of other places to get it from on the net (digikey [digikey.com] *might* have some, but I haven't checked).

  • I think you're going about this exactly backwards. You're sticking a whole bunch of processing equipment out at the sensor. Why not just send the *raw* analog signal(s) in an rf modulated form back to a receiver at the main PC. Lower parts count, less power, higher reliability, easier to carry out. Analog modulation schemes that produce high fidelity are easy, and there are a lot of ways to do analog multiplexing for multiple channels. Another hint - don't bust your budget (money, time, brains) trying to get high power out of your transmitter; a sensitive receiver and proper antenna will benefit you more.
  • Ricochet [ricochet.net] wireless modems offer a 28.8kbps connection, and can be used in peer-to-peer mode *without* requiring a service provider (Metricom [metricom.com] will never tell you this of course). Range is a couple of miles. They operate like regular modems in every sense: serial connection, AT command set.

    Each modem has a "modem number" on the back and you just "ATDTXXXX-YYYY" to dial another Ricochet modem. The other side even sends the "RING" string, and you use "ATA" to answer. Totally transparent to whatever application you are using. These are truly wireless modems.

    Although they are tough to get (either through ebay [ebay.com], or Metricom [metricom.com] with a 1 year signup), they are the most amazing devices. I have two, and they cost me about $120 a piece. They are pretty funny to use with TI calculators and a Graphlink.

    -Justin
  • My bandwidth requirements are very small--perhaps a hundred 12-bit samples per second would do it

    You call that small bandwidth? Only five years ago I was controlling a 24-turbine power station over a 1200 baud UUCP link -- and liked it!

  • I work with Fanuc Robotics who are currently playing with a 2 megabit per second wireless ethernet system. A Access point plugs into a standard ethernet hub, and a Client Access Bridge plugs into the 10/100BT ethernet port on the client device's ethernet card. This allows seamless wireless ethernet communication between a LAN and any number of clients without the need of drivers, PCMCIA wireless ethernet cards, etc.

    You could couple this with something like Dallas Semiconductor's TINI - a microprocessor, RAM, EPROM, and Ethernet controller that runs Java. (www.tini.com)

    The TINI device would be wired to acquire the data, and send it to the collecting server via Java's Remote Method Invocation protocol, or some other TCP/IP based protocol of your own design. With an wireless Access Point on the PC server and a wireless Client Access Bridge on each data acquition device you'd be able to meet all your requirements.

    The TINI hardware is very inexpensive. The wireless ethernet hardware will be considerably more. I don't know the brand name of the hardware Fanuc is using but I could check if you're interested.

    Jeff McWilliams
    Software Architect
    ACE Technologies
    Jeff.mcWilliams@acetechnologies.net

  • Couple radio shack catlouges had these little sensors that would record the data, then you hook it up to the serial port to download it leter. If you need a ton of data, or if you need it real time, this might not work. But it you only need a little data, you can set the things to record like once an hour I think, and then download it like 2 weeks and it should be fine. Just searched their website and didn't see it though.
  • "My bandwidth requirements are very small--perhaps a hundred 12-bit samples per second would do it. I would like the data acquisition module to be as small as possible. And I'd like the possibility of acquiring data from more than one module, rather like a multiple-channel data acquisition system."

    Sounds like a few modifications to a cheap guitar wireless unit would do it. They even got some close-outs at Nady [nadywireless.com].
  • Instead of designing and building a complex digital telemetry system, why not use some old analog technology? Many early telemetry systems were analog. The sensors were connected to VCOs (voltage controlled oscillators), and the VCOs were mixed together and used to modulate a FM transmitter. This was a simple, cheap and reliable package. The data acquisition station had a FM receiver, its audio was fed to a bank of FM discriminators, one discriminator for each VCO. The outputs of the disciminators were connected to a stripchart and/or a set of ADCs for computer processing. This works great for systems with a small number of parameters that need to be collected. The output of the FM receiver can be recorded on an ordinary analog magnetic tape recorder for archival storage and analysis. For some sample frequency plans, this page [herley.com] has tables listing the standard frequencies used in IRIG (Inter-Range Instrumentation Group) FDM (frequency division multiplex) systems.
  • > I've never heard of any major protocol ported to a microcontroller.

    You need to read about the IPic match-head sized web server [umass.edu].

    The author claims RFC-1122 (host requirements) compliance and telnet and web servers in 1K 12-bit words.

    Having said that, I suspect a simple, application specific protocol would be more effective in this case.

  • These are wireless bidirectional RS-232 devices originally sold with Lap-Link Wireless. They are occasionally now found on Ebay. They have three selectable channels, operate at 900MHz, and transmit up to 115Kbps. They are short range, only about 30 feet, but one might try modifying them for additional range. They require a particular a particular control line toggled in order to activate, but I forget which one. Some patient work should get them figured out.

    RC Car using AirShare [cornell.edu]

  • Here is a pretty good setup of a web-controlled robot. You can send instructions for robotic movement from the browser and there's streaming video for feedback. http://www.jawed.com/camera/
  • Guess I should add more info to bump up the karma :-)

    Fieldpoint consists of a number of modules connected to a central PC.
    There are a number of different modules including:
    • Network modules (RS-232/485, Ethernet, FieldBus plus option for wireless modem)
    • Analogue input (12 and 16 bit) and output
    • Digital input and output
    • Relay modules
    • Thermocouple input

    And so on. Extremely tough Distributed DAQ or I/O solution - obviously more expensive than breaking out your soldering iron, but then again, you don't need to spend the rest of you life figuring how to do it all :-)
  • the only link i found of interest was a packet radio modem kit for ibm pc's.

    see packet radio modem kit [gatewayelex.com] it's $59 for one end.

    I know they have "ming kits" too, but they do not appear to be on the web page. geez, i wish someone in st. louis would learn php or something.

  • you need to be a ham and have tx and rx to use packet i think...

  • by markana ( 152984 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @03:41PM (#595249)
    http://www.ramseyelectronics.com

    They have micro telemetry/control transmitters and receivers good for a few hundred feet (maybe a bit more). They're probably not the only source for these particular units, but since I just saw them in the new catalog, I thought I'd mention it.
    Part numbers RXD-433, TXE-433.

  • For your purpose, the German SCOPE program seems to be the best choice.
    Contact the University of Karlsruhe and/or the City Hall of Duesseldorf, both Germany.

    The data are processed to a 3D model, with extrapolation and accuracy scalable by you.
    The program also generates output that can be used to control a movement over (or through) the terrain.
    So it can be used for cruise-missile like steering.
    It also makes it possible to extrapolate in time, to predict ground-water flow.

    I had the "fun" to port this from a UNIX mini-super (2 PR1ME machines) to an IBM ES/9000 running MVS/ESA.
    If you contact the City Hall of Duesseldorf [duesseldorf.de], dept. of Environment, they sure can help you with data aquisition issues.
    I worked in the central IT dept., and the department of environmental issues [duesseldorf.de] is using the program,
    including gathering data from different sources with different methods.

    --
    Famous last words:
    (1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
    (2) "You and what army?"
    (3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
    a cop."
    --- FAX: +32 58-243730 -------- VOICE: +32 58-243036 ---
    Joerg F. "George" Wangerin - IT Professional since 1978 (NRW,Germany)
    -=- jfwcc - Think Tank / HelpDesk -=- 126802
    http://titan.glo.be/jfwcc/pull/ mailto:jorgjfw@well.com
  • niode stands for Network Input Output Device for Ethernet. Basily you have a 10baseT, 10base2, or 10base5 port on one side and a DIDO port on the other. You communicate to it via a standard ethernet network and UDP packets. In fact If you need wireless just add a wireless ethernet converter ($$$) and its wireless. Multiples no problem just have to give each unit its own IP address... Currently I have most of the basic functions done (ethernet config, ARP, PING, and basic UDP packet handling) just need to finish up the code that takes the data from the packets and does some thing usefull. About 3 more good days of work and it could be done but need to actual work on it... URL is http://members.home.net/wireb/niode/niode/index.ht ml best of all they will be cheap. I am expecing the part cost to be under $50 for everything when done. Yes I know the page is not up to date (will get to it some day too busy working on the project right now.)
  • RF Monolithics [rfm.com] make a bunch of one-chip radio solutions. OK, so it requires some electronics to interface to the PC, but not much. Take a look at the TX5000 and RX5000 datasheets. They're low power, too, which is nice for battery powered applications.

    If you want to connect multiple devices on the one frequency, then you have to have a transmitter and receiver at each unit, and have the master run a polling loop. So that all gets a bit tricky.

    Another alternative is Bluetooth. Magical, but still forthcoming, and still very expensive at the moment.

  • I did this last year for a robotics project. It didn't hurt too badly.
    The chain of devices I used went like this:
    1. Basic Stamp [slashdot.org] board
    2. Wireless modem
    3. Wireless modem
    4. PC comm port
    5. Java classes listening on the serial port
    There is some programming and soldering involved. But I don't know of a cheap out-of-the-box wireless data logging system - Or even an expensive one that isn't hopelessly proprietary. So you might not be able to do this unless you're willing to get up to your elbows in it and build your own.
    Good Luck!
  • Check out Parallax, they have a lot of cool stuff including some wireless moduels. http://www.parallaxinc.com/ You will copy and paste the link.
  • I believe This [geocities.com] is what you're looking for. Although it's not really suited for multiple sources and you need some kind of RS232 hardware on the acquisition end...
  • Take a look at http://www.zetron.com/english/front/scada.html

    That's one good example of whats available to do what you want to do. Their gear will interface between your sensors and the transmission media (wire, radio, whatever).

    If the Zetron stuff interests you then contact your local two way radio company (most sell zetron) and if they can't help you contact Mountain Communications at 208-263-8226 and ask for Thor.
  • I have put together a wireless system that is currently being used in an Oilfield application.

    To translate the input of a device with a varying voltage (Pressure, temperature, etc transducer) we use a little device from Dataq www.dataq.com [dataq.com] part number DI-194 which converts the signal into a serial stream. This device has 4 channels so it can be hooked up to more than 1 sensor. Then we use a radio modem from Freewave www.freewave.com [freewave.com] which is expensive but incredibly robust and reliable. These modems do NOT need a license as long as their output power measured at the antennae is under 1 Watt. The pre-built modems are very expensive but the OEM modules are cheaper if you want to build your own box with the DI-194 inside which is what we do.

  • ...you know, similar to the Dorothy experiment in the movie "Twister"? Now that'd really need remote telemetry, though 100 12-bit samples per second might not be enough.
  • I used the RF modules [parallaxinc.com] sold by Parallax; but I can't recommend them. They're buggy and frustrating. I'd recommend using real wireless modems if you want a clean, transparent serial connection. I was told by Mark Pauline, of all people, to use Wavelan cards. But I haven't tried 'em myself. Good luck.
  • A slightly pricey ($2100 or so) solution: the Tiqit matchbox PC - a 486 in 5 cubic inches [slashdot.org]. I saw these at PCExpo last year, and it _really_ looks like a solid solution for putting a remote instrument out there. Since it has an internal disk, you can even keep the data streams local and handle your sensors over the serial ports. It'll run a light kernel quite happily, too.

    the other $600 is for a 1.2M or 2M wireless ether node (used or clearanced as the Lucent 11M parts obsolete the 2M), and a wireless card for the management PC. It's pricey, but you end up with a self-contained PC that should be able to handle a ridiculous number of sensors. If you need realtime, it gives you the option of using 1M, 2M or 11M ether (11M ether is still _quite_ expensive for the 'hubs'), or locally storing the data on the acquisition device if realtime isn't an issue.

  • If you want to go several hundred feet, transmit RS-232 with a laser pointer [geocities.com].
  • Notice that X10.Com, and other sources, have "wireless audio" devices. You can feed the output from a modem to an audio transmitter. You need a modem which will transmit even though it does not receive a carrier from the other end. If the modem also has a two-wire or four-wire "leased line" mode then it also is easier to interface -- if you have to emulate a phone circuit then you'll need a half-dozen more components. And you'll need a data rate fast enough for your data...
  • The dude wants to study torandoes the question is where is he going to get the coke can ends
  • Look a little further down on that page and you'll see a light beam communicator. Seems to be a two-way audio infrared link. (Increase range with lenses)

    Connect a four-wire leased line modem to it and you have a two-way data link. (Many modems have "leased line" mode, but a four-wire has separate audio wires for send and receive -- you can convert a phone modem to four-wire by building a phone-to-audio converter, which might be as simple as plugging in a telephone and battery)

  • If so, then nothing beats Infrared!
  • by pb ( 1020 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @02:50PM (#595266)
    ...is a large, spinning mirror, and a tracking device...

    ...and we could vaporize a human target from space!

    Yeah, *sure*, that's why you want it. We believe you...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @02:51PM (#595267)
    ...though it uses a COM port for the sensor. It worked pretty well for our junkyard seismometer. I remember stomping on the ground and starting a sine wave with a 13-second period.

    I just have to ask: why does the PC have to be so far away? Are these experiments dealing with strong electromagnetic phenomenon? If so, then I'd understand, but otherwise, several hundred feet would seem paranoid.

  • by kfstark ( 50638 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @02:57PM (#595268) Homepage
    We have been using freewave radios (www.freewave.com) that are basically radio serial links. The nice thing about them is that they can be used as repeaters that allow multiple hops up to 100+km (a little overkill for your need). They can be used in a point to point mode and in a TDMA mode where the signals are timesliced (up to 16 connections) into the data stream and can be pulled out on the other end. Throughput is up to 115200 without repeaters and 57600 with 1 or two repeaters. We use them extensively in the SCIGN (Southern California GPS Network) to transmit GPS data back to our hub (www-socal.wr.usgs.gov/scign).

    Unfortunately they are a little expensive at about $1200 per radio.

  • by kwj8fty1 ( 225360 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @02:51PM (#595269) Homepage
    I've used a Cat-5 cable as a serial cable for distances over 800 feet. This was for 9600BPS, connecting to a router. It worked great, and I never had any problems. I think you really only need 3 wires for serial (that's all I had connected), so you could get a few serial lines in one CAT5 cable. That's the cheapest/easiest route I can think of; but I'm sure that there are wireless solutions. HAM guys will tell you about the 2400BAUD wireless packet radio stuff; this would work I'm sure, but it's cost is a little higher than just a cat5 cable!


    Cheers!
    -Eric
  • by dan_linder ( 84060 ) <dan&linder,org> on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @02:54PM (#595270) Homepage
    If InfraRed does not have the range, and line of site is possible, you could look into making a simple laser diode/receiver that hooks into the serial port for data transmission.
    Anyone have any schematics? An old Popular Electronics hacked up two laser pointers to make a simple wireless transmitter/receiver for voice (the microphone modulated the amplifier feeding the laser I think). Anyone up to modifying it for 9600 baud data?

    Dan
    dan_linder.at.yahoo.com@somewhere.else
    (Remove the "@somewhere.else" and replace ".at." with "@" to e-mail me.)
  • would use a UHF sender and reciever.
    It doesn't require line of sight, so its not like Infra-red, and you could probably get disant bandwidth (9600 baud)
    you could most likely get the parts from a disected UHF remote-control.
  • you can always check out x10.com [x10.com] and if they don't have what you are looking for you could email them and ask about it and they might be able to come up with something, or tell you where you could find something. x10 has some Great radio controlled devices...my room at home has x10 units hooked up into the lights and such...all by remote control...we even have motionsensors and are looking into getting some other stuff.

    Of course...ethernet cable would work just fine for distances over a hundred feet....as long as it is less that 1500 ft (or whatever the max for ethernet cable is) That would offer excellent speed and would be useful for other things as well.

  • Have you considered picking up a copy of NASA Tech Briefs [nasatech.com] and look through their ads? Every time I pick one up, there are ads for sensors, many of which are remote transmitting, USB connecting, fibre connection, self contained for dumping the data at a later time, and many other ingenious ways.

    In fact, there is a package called LabView [ni.com] which is extensible and many data collectors provide modules to LabView with their sensors. LabView is predominantly a Windows [flyingbuttmonkeys.com] product, but don't let some folk's bias get in the way of work. [Note: I'm not a Windows fan, but will use it when required or if it's the right tool for the job, which it is for things like data collection.]

    I cannot attest to cost, but merely to the fact that advertising in TechBriefs has even stuck with someone who has no interest in scientific data collection, like myself. Cheers. ----- Want intelligence? Go to Stratfor.com [stratfor.com]. If it's in the news, it's too late.

  • Something like this reminds me of Spider Mans tracking-bug things. Now if only someone would develop crazy string strong enough for me to web-sling through city streets with, I could dress up in red and blue pajamas and NOT be considered a lunatic!

    --
  • Depending on your budget, these radios sound extremely cool.

    I've heard that the Innomedia radios were available at Fry's for a while for 150$ a pair.
    I've found a place selling the Sima equivalent for 250$ a pair. http://www.pontech.com/products/sima/
    There is an article at http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/200011/mode m.htm that shows some applications of the radios.
    I imagine that one of the small computers-on-a-chip could be used to sample the data, and send it up to your computer.
    These radios also appear to be able to support one to many connections, but not simultaneously.

    I'd like to build a mobile robot based on a pair of these. The hard part will be finding an open-source friendly USB webcam.
    Please excuse the rambling nature of this post, Its been a long day.
  • by NovoPericulum ( 242705 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @04:08PM (#595276)
    I'm not too sure that I understand exactly what you want, but I'll give this a shot. From what I gather, you have X number of instrumentation installations spread around a local site. You want to collect the data from all of them with one central unit, and then dump the data to a PC. I would do one of the following...

    1) Set up an RTU data recording device and attach it to each sensor collection point. Depending on the type of sensors you use (0-2.5V. 4-20 mA, RS-232 "smart sensors", etc...), you should be able to find a relatively inexpensive Datalogger/RTU that fits the bill. If it is to be located in a harsh environment (outdoors, cold, etc.), make sure you have a board and enclosure suitably rated for such conditions (you can find severe environment units from www.lakewood.com).

    Next, get an RS-232 -> Ethernet device. ZWorld had a spiffy programmable one that can be found at http://www.zworld.com/emseries.html.

    Finally, get an 802.11 wireless device and connect it to the ethernet output of the RS-232 -> Ethernet "modem".

    The nice thing about this setup is that you don't need any crazy serial input boards or wireless RS-232 devices. Everything comes in through a nice packet switched TCP/IP network. This is a blessing for keeping the end user software simple and stable.

    2) One other possible solution is to do all of the above, but with one change. Instead of the RS-232 -> Ethernet device and the 802.11 connections, simply attach a Mobitex, CDMA, or CDPD wireless device to the RTU's. Granted this has some more cost associated with the mothly fees, but most carriers have lower cost "data only" packages without all of the crappy consumer features that you have no need for. And again, this has the benefit of a packet switched connection. As well, if your sensors are REALLY far apart, this might be the most economical solution in the long run due to the extra cost of "repeaters" and such. Plus, most of these types of devices already have the capability to connect to RS-232 components without extra hardware. And, if you're lucky, you can get the whole package in a 99 dollar heavily subsidized digital phone from your favorite carrier :)

    Just my humble opinion, from a humble man who has done these things before :)

    Feel free to contact me on ICQ 34034928 if necessary. My listed e-mail is a fake :)

    "You should read my new book: Humility, and how I attained it with 343 Illustrated Pictures of the Author."
  • LabVIEW is an expensive package ($1995.00 USD), but for high end systems, it is undoubtedly the best. I have used it as both an employee and a customer of National Instruments, and I have found it to be quite useful for reducing development time and cost in the long run.

    Run time licenses are free, and there are thousands of drivers [ni.com] for different types of hardware, some of which would be useful for this wireless data acquisition application. Of course, the FieldPoint [ni.com] system that another NI employee mentioned above is designed to be controlled easily with LabVIEW.

    Finally, though LabVIEW is primarily used on the Win32 platform, most of its features are available on other OSes, including Linux [ni.com].

  • I have used Linx Technologies [linxtechnologies.com] modules for a few designs, and have been happy with their performance. Linx is primarily aimed at OEMs, so you won't find a lot of finished products on their site. However, they do have an eval board that has a DB9 RS232 connection [more or less give it power, and you can have simplex communication]. For your specific application, you'd probably need something mildly custom made, unless your sensors speak RS232. In either event, their eval boards would get you started.
  • What sort of wireless modem did you use?

    I have been wanting to do this... but using a TINI board instead of the Stamp.

  • You can make pretty cool robots/remote sensors/positronic brains with BASIC stamps gotten from radio shack. You can write a little diddy that takes the sensor data and streams it to an I/O port. Modulating the data collected for tansmission can be done in lots of ways. You can modulate the data and then just transmit it. The PC on the other end demods the signals and captures the datastream. Plug the stamp's I/O pins into a little AM or FM transmitter. Don't bother about duplex communication unless you ABSOLUTELY need it. BASIC stamps have pretty limited memory which means interactive programs aren't going to be very easy to make if at all. I've never heard of any major protocol ported to a microcontroller. I suppose the best method would be to build a mini-RF modem and modulate the data on the controller then stream it to the transmitter.
  • If indoors, it's easy to fill a room with IR.

    Ever see an Imax 3D movie? They use IR transmitters--about 10 banks of 50 LEDs each--to flood the large theatre. The signal sends data to the glasses which tell the LCD shutters which side should be on/off.

    In a smaller room, a single bank of 10 IR LEDs should do it. I control lots of things around the office with IR. If your ceiling reflects IR well, just have a bank of 10 LEDs pointing up and you can fill a big room.

    You can transmit regular serial data (with some error checking code) and use an IR reciever module (look for Vishay and Sharp as suppliers) that outputs TTL levels which your serial port may be able to handle directly or with a small interface.

    IR "bits" at slower rates are generally transmitted as pulses of a 35-45 kHz tone. While many standards are self-clocking for reliability, you can send regular serial data, the presense of the tone for "mark" and the absense for "space"

  • 2M radios are probably only legal for HAMs (and it doesn't sound like this guy is a ham). there are, however, all sorts of audio repeaters, FM transmitters, etc. that could be legally used instead.
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
  • One of our sister companies offers a service called Cellemetry. It is basically low speed telemetry using the control channel of the Cellular phone network. Coverage includes all of North America and is growing internationally. The radios are available with a variety of inputs and outputs (yes you can control things too). Applications include car alarms, tracking of rail stock and remote automated inventory management. Check out Cellemetry's web site [cellemetry.com] or reply to this comment to contact me.
  • On 100 12-bit samples per second??!

    Yeah, right. Unless the girls stand very still, that is...

    I can think of plenty of uses for this: temperature sensors scattered around a large space (probably wouldn't even need the modest bandwidth he's asking for here), or flowrate monitoring (or other phenomena) around a river, for example.
  • Yeah, we used one of these for our senior project in college. We had a remote data collection unit that sampled voltage off a ADC. The microcontroller grabbed the ADC data and used the ming to transmit the data back to the PC. Worked great.
  • I'm amazed that nobody hasn't mentioned Bluetooth [axis.com]. IMHO it's just the thing you described.
  • I ran across this site after entering "radio telemetry" in the google search engine. It might have what you need:
    http://www.woodanddouglas.co.uk/telemetr/te l1.htm
  • Or you could just use a telephone wire for 1/4 the cost. CAT5 has no advantage over a telephone line when using an RS-232 signal (unless you use very expensive shielded wire - costs a fortune!!)

    For even greater distance you could wire up an RS232 to RS422 converter (very simple - did it for a lab in electronics class in under 5min.) Using a differential pair (ie: RS422) will greatly increase the distance you can go. See the link below:

    http://www.rs485.com/rs485spec.html

    This link does a great job at explaining the differences between the two. Here is a quote:

    >>>RS422 (differential) was designed for greater distances and higher Baud rates than RS232. In its simplest form, a pair of converters from RS232 to RS422 (and back again) can be used to form an "RS232 extension cord." Data rates of up to 100K bits / second and distances up to 4000 Ft. can be accommodated with RS422.

    Willy
  • "You call that small bandwidth? Only five years ago I was controlling a 24-turbine power station over a 1200 baud UUCP link -- and liked it!"
    If you do the math, 12 bits x 100 = 1200bps = 1200 baud. Same bandwidth as your "24 turbine power station". Obviously since he's talking samples per second, latency is a factor where your 24 turbine power station, it wasn't that big a deal.
  • A week or so ago a whole lot of lamers dumped on ham radio operators in this forum, and now when you have a project that needs an easy solution, you come running to us for an answer.... (soapbox) Hams pioneered the underlying technologies for most of what we take for granted today. Unlike Algore we really did invent many things. (/soapbox) One of the things we got into decades ago was telemetry. We regularly bounce signals off satellites and distant ground stations. Usually one would need a valid FCC license for this, however one is allowed to put out a signal under 100 milliwatts without a license in many frequency bands.

    My advice is to find the nearest ham club (there is one in your town, I'd wager) and ask them for help. Chances are, if this is not a commercial venture, they might even consider working jointly on this kind of a project. For that matter, if it is commercial and you guys are willing to pay, I know that someone in their club would be willing to do the work. At any rate, they ought to be able to point you in the right direction, seeing as this kind of stuff is what we do for fun.

    --KD4TFF
    Jefferson Amateur Radio Club
    Metairie, Louisiana

  • Ah, a fan of "The Art of Electronics". We did something similar by having our rockets transmit information to pcs on the ground in the Alaska Student Rocket Project. http://www.uaf.edu/asgp/sindex.htm You should check it out to see if that is the kind of thing you would be interested in doing (I can guarantee it would meet your distance requirements :) ) But if you decide to email them the people you'll want to ask for specifically will be Greg Kvokov or Jay Helmericks. Good luck.
  • We've been using the Cisco Aironet gear for relaying data for the Marine Corps Marathon for the last two years. Cables are not an option when you're working with 21,000+ people in a park. The Aironet gear is relatively expensive (much cheaper before Cisco acquired Aironet), very easy to setup, and very powerful (11 Mbps). For distances up to 300 feet you really just need a "root" bridge and satellite bridges; they come with very small (6" antennas). I got one of those tiny antennas connecting my network at a distance of over 400 feet in the wide open. You can always get larger yogi, omnidirectional, or satellite dishes to broadcast up to miles and miles away. Oh yeah, you can encrypt the data as well.
  • I like this, but I would skip the phone/modem part (number one, the phone is going to cost a bit more than $20 - probably closer to $40). Instead, use a couple of walkie-talkies. Cheap kids toy kind - or more expensive (less interference) family radio kind.

    You only need one transmitting, and the other receiving. Set up a tone generator on the trans part, supplying high/low/mark tones (three tones, to indicate start, data, stop bits). The receiver's speaker output could go into the computer's sound card. Record and analyse the waveform data to get your data stream.

    Now you may be wondering "How the heck do you do multiple channels with this idea?"

    The answer to that? Round-robin.

    Say you have three sensors, each with a walkie-talkie attached (a fourth walkie-talkie is at the "base station" PC). Two walkie-talkies are in "listen" mode, one is transmitting. The "base station" walkie-talkie listens all the time, and records all the sound (via the sound card in the PC). When one sensor walkie-talkie finishes, the mark tone for the next sensor walkie-talkie in the round-robin is sounded, causing that walkie-talkie to switch into transmit mode, and the first to receive. These mark tones are unique frequencies for each walkie-talkie in the round-robin (so, you would need a tone generator and decoder for each walkie-talkie sensor system - use a 555 for the tone generator, and a 567 for the decoder).

    A kludge? Yep.

    One other possibility is to just have them all transmitting at once - the signals will overlap - and then doing some hard-core waveform analysis on everything (maybe you could put a carrier tone on each). Or, you might be able to retune a bunch of walkie-talkie pairs, then select each pair at the base station PC via the parallel port (and an analog switch IC), feeding each walkie-talkie output in fashion to the PC sound card input...

    You would probably get the same kind of line-of-sight distance as the AC's solution, more with the family radios. Shouldn't cost more than $40 per sensor on the low end (plus some blood, sweat, and tears to wire everything up and code the software interface).

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • Information Unlimited has some optical receivers intended for picking up voice modulated laser signals, but you might be able to hack one into a system for data.

    Link is here [amazing1.com]
    ---

  • Get an older laptop with a sound card. A sound card with 16 bit accuracy will give you 44100 16 bit samples per second, which is more than enough.

    Then pick up a wireless ethernet card for the laptop.

    And, of course, if the laptops are cheap enough, you could make a beowulf cluster of these.. ;)

    If you want to spend more money and get something smaller, see about one of the HP Jornada handheld PCs. You'd have to get an external digitizer hooked to the serial port and write WinCE software to take advantage of it, but they are pretty small and they have a PCMCIA slot for wireless ethernet. Alternitively, you could rip it open and hotwire your sensor to the microphone jack.
  • Try National Instruments FieldPoint system. It's a rugged distributed I/O system with wireless, serial, ethernet and Fieldbus options.
    Look at the Fieldpoint section on NI's site [ni.com]

    Yeap, you guessed it, I work for National Instruments :-)

    Seriously though, there are some very interesting options with the NI gear.
  • Check out LaserMate [lasermate.com] if that is what you're looking for. They have laser modules that take TTL-level input for datarates in the (low) megabits, and also modules that take analog input if you want to do some other waveform than square.

    Then you just have to make the receiver, which could be any RadioShack phototransistor...

  • You might try these cheap 300MHz Transmitters [yahoo.com] and Recievers [yahoo.com] (also available from Digikey.com for a higher price). You can read about EE476 students using them in a customized RC truck here [cornell.edu].
  • I'd stick with RF... it's more fun. What you want is some of our RF modules..
    1000feet is easy.
    but you could probably build your own.
    use Radiometrix RF modules. http://www.radiometrix.co.uk/

    their about AU$100 @.. but very very very easy to use.
    anyway, Infrared is boring and so's cabling.

    Matt

  • by Bryan Andersen ( 16514 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @04:27PM (#595300) Homepage
    Why bother with a laser. They are a pain to drive. Use a high intensity LED and lenses. You don't need precision lenses either. Cheap plastic ones will do. Just point the high intensity LED in the direction of the receiver. Use the lense to focus the light from the LED onto the photo transistor. A black disk behind your LED can help improve the signal to noise ratio. Especially if it is large enough to cover the hole area focused on to the phototransistor. The longer the focal lenght of the lense, the smaller the area see at the LED end.
  • Here is the perfect solution for you. They are extremely cheap and the size of a postage stamp. I even hacked one of these things a week ago by adding a few 2n2222 in parallel to bost the effective signal to over two miles. I am sure that the FCC would not quite approve of the 4 watt bilinear amp I added ;). They can be bought from www.rentron.com/remote.htm [rentron.com]
  • I imagine that there are enough illegal aliens running around that would give anything for a job that pays $0.12/hr, in which they can stand in a fixed location and shout data at roughly 1200baud to another illegal alien acting as the "receiver".

    Signal degredation and packet loss might be an issue during siesta.

    --cr@ckwhore
  • Weeder Technologies (www.weedtech.com) has good multi-drop A/D modules that have an RS-232 interface. Then get a pair of wireless modems - older Proxim's can be found surplus that work fine, or get new ones from someone like Hummingbird (http://www.xetron.com/900xcvr.htm).
    Then use a linux box. I have serial code you can have (LGPL) if you want.
  • Do you need any kind of FCC lisences?
  • HAM radio might be a great option to consider... all you need is a simple TNC which can be made from scrap parts and (2) 2m radios (144.000-148.000mhz) ... simple TNCs should be able to transmit @ 2400 baud or greater, and since your requirements are only around 1200baud, this might work ok. Of course, you need to be an amateur radio operator with a valid license.

    --n1zpp

  • I really like these products from Fluke [fluke.com]. They are not particularly inexpensive, but can be rented for a reasonable fee, and are extremely rugged. If you only need it for a limited time, why not rent something that you are sure will work?

    thad

  • A Fluke Hydra series wireless data logger should be able to take care of this. If you want something cheaper, take a look at PC/104 aquisition boards from Diamond Systems. You can link them up to a PC with a wireless modem.
  • You didn't give much information so here's my 2 cents worth...

    To digitize the signal you are using you can use several means. Probably a cheap and versatile means is to use Adam Data Aquisition Modules (a facsimile is available from www.computerboards.com [computerboards.com]. They are small and run off of 24 VDC. They can do analog/digital I/O, counting, temerature measurement, etc. They use a RS485 (2 or 4 wire) serial link which could be converted to wireless (using ???). Then simply feed the data into a PC serial port (may need a RS232 to RS485 converter).

    There are also standalone data aquisition modules that can do the above too. Then you can periodically hook up a laptop to it and download the data.

    That's about all I can offer based on the little infromation you provided and the 2 cents I had to work with :)

  • No License is needed. We do use some 5 watt amps that recquire a license but the basic unit does not.
  • > The glasses themselves are just polarized differently

    I find this hard to beleive, given that Imax claims the system is *sequential* left/right (alternating left/right frames).

    Are you sure?

  • Why not just build a small Linux system with wireless 802.11 net connection and multi-channel ADC card? Of course, this all really depends on what your data aquisition requirements and budget are, but a simple system would only be about $300 per node.

    All of the parts neccessary are easily obtainable "off the shelf" and frequently "on the cheap" via Ebay and other surplus sales. For instance, take an ISA 4-5 slot backplane. Add in a 486 SBC computer card (preferably with a Disk-on-Chip built in), 12 port ADC ISA card, ISA to PCMCIA card, and a PCMCIA 802.11 wireless network card. Roll your own cut-down Linux distribution with network/serial drivers and a script to automatically poll the ADC and send results via the network to another machine. Throw in a wall-wort to power it and your done! (Well almost.)

  • you could try these guys. i think they have something called "ming kits" that let you write parallel data in and rcv parallel data on the far side.

    they have stores in denver, san diego, st. louis.

    if you need details via phone or email i'd try to hit up the san diego store first, i think they have an old navy fart working there who knows the most about their radio kits.

    a one-way link will probably set you back like $100 just for parts, but i'm guessing.

  • Here is a pretty good setup of a web-controlled robot. You can send instructions for robotic movement from the browser and there's streaming video for feedback. http://www.jawed.com/camera/ [jawed.com]
  • A few Walkie-Talkies and a lot of free time.

  • Actually, and interesting thing....my friend MattH [matthoppes.org] does a radio show online [awmlive.com] (an on the radio) and last year we did spots that included On-the-scene reporting (for instance...outside for the weather and such) we actually used FRS radios. We used a small, 2 channel mixer, and it worked really well. I would be outside with one radio, and he would be inside with the other. I would talk through the radio, from whatever location I was at (up to 2 miles away) and he would recieve it all on the computer and stream it using shoutcast and winamp. It was sorta interesting and could certainly work. It would also be fairly cheap...50 bucks for a coupla FRS radios (which almost everyone has nowadays) and 75 for a cheap mixer (or run it straight into your line-in jack).

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