[Pool Water Monitoring] #17 - Frustrations, frustrations and some new ways.

Hi all ! Hope everyone is well.

This blog post is just to vent some frustrations I'm having .

Data collecting

In the data collecting front, everything (almost) is set up and working. I just need to include the deep sleep functions to save battery and it's ready to go.

PH probe

The PH probe has arrive and is working - sort of. I'm having a bit of trouble calibrating it. One of the calibration processes is to have 2.5v on the output, but I'm can only go to 2.59v. I've tried with a multimeter and the Arduino serial monitor. Powered by an Arduino as well by a bench power supply... No luck...

Still have to dig a bit more .

Data receiving

On the data receiving part, everything is working.

I get all the data send by the MKR 1300 WAN on the data collecting and I'm able to process all the values and I know which is which.

Data displaying

Because I don't display the data when collecting it (no one is there to see it), it's displayed on the data receiving end (per my project design).

To be able to use the Grove parts send with the KIT, I was relying on an Arduino UNO to be able to use the grove base and then all the other components. But, how to send the data values to the Arduino UNO ?

My first attempt was Serial Communication.

I was never able to send data from one to the other. Don't know why. I know the MKR has two serial ports (at least, I can use Serial1, and the PINs are 13 and 14), but even that, I wasn't able to see any data in the serial console.

I was going to try to use the SoftwareSerial library, but, not anymore.

Because I'm not one to give up right away, so,and by happenstance, I came across this:

An Arduino MKR Connector Carrier. This will allow the Arduino MKR 1300 WAN to connect grove modules. Nice. I can ditch the Arduino UNO and keep things even simpler.

Arduino IoT cloud

One of my goals is also to display the values in the Arduino IOT Cloud dashboard - that I know now, using my plan (free) isn't sharable, so I can't share it with you to see, and I've maxed out the variables I can create. 

But, I'm having a really really hard time to be able to connect the Arduino MKR 1300 WAN to the Arduino IoT Cloud. Don't know what the problem might be, but this is not the first time I have this problem... The device is recognized and I'm able to upload the sketch to it, but nothing happens... Nothing is displayed on the Serial console (the one from the Arduino IoT Cloud). Still have to see what is happening.

Because of this, I'm already exploring other ways, like the TTN .

Stay tuned for more.

How are you going ? Having a lot of problems ?

Cheers and stay safe.