I had a funny glitch on one of my Raspberry Pis this weekend. Somehow the operating system corrupted and wouldn't boot anymore. Luckily it was on the one running PiFace and I have not done much with it so I didn't lose much. I should have probably run recovery mode....but I forgot. Oh well, I wiped the whole thing and reinstalled the various packages needed to run PiFace and Paho (for communicating with mosquitto, the MQTT broker). This was on an older Raspberry Pi, not on one of the new ones that came in the kit.
Right now I'm working on the sensor publish code. I have it sending sensor data from all of the sensors, including the GPS module that is piggy backing on Xtrinsic. All of that data is sent to mosquitto the MQTT broker and the broker then pushes it out to the subscribers (web browser, PiFace). Once I have that code done I will start working on the front-end stuff. This includes a customer web page, a client (the pizza joint) web page, and driver phone app. The back end will be the MySQL server that is already installed on RPI 2 server.
In other news, I made a few exciting purchases. I finally purchased a pizza delivery bag to modify. It's an actual delivery bag from Little Caesar's Pizza.
I also purchased an external temperature probe (DS18B20). I was using the temperature sensor that is built into Xtrinsic's sense board, but I noticed that it reads room temperature a little warmer than expected which means its probably getting heat from the board. Also, when I install the boards into the delivery bag, they will be separated from the pizza contents so I'm not sure how well it will sense temperature.
Lastly, I purchased a heating element (PTC ceramic heating element 5V 176F 3W) to test out. This one is a little different from what I had been researching earlier. I decided to experiment with this one instead because the description said it heats surrounding air through convection and it stays at a constant temperature of 176 degrees F. I really have no idea how well it heats the surrounding air, but it is used for a variety of professional applications beyond being used as a foot warmer, so that seems promising. According to what I've read, food needs to be above 140 degrees F to kill bacteria. However, there needs to be a sweet spot because I don't want to cook the pizza, either. Just keep it warm. I definitely don't want to cook the cardboard box, either.
Another item on my list is some of that reflective lining to keep the heat in. I think I might find it at a fabric store, but I have to do some research. That's it for now...until my next post!