Gobetwino

Nico - many thanks for that; I've been meaning to play with Gobetwino for a while now and you gave me the impetus I needed! Now I need to make it do what I want it to do !!

You're very welcome, Neil! What is it you are wanting it to do?

Hi Neil,

That sounds like a great project! I've been thinking of automating the watering in my greenhouse, but now I'm curious about the temperatures too - you make a good point about the length of the minimum temp.

I think your idea will totally work - let the netbook do the heavy lifting of long distance wireless. And it would be relatively simple to do. It didn't take much for me to open Notepad and write to it, so once you figure out what keystrokes to make for excel (or OpenOffice equivalent) the rest should be just a lather-rinse-repeat process.

You would have to add the occasional "save" keystroke in there too.

If your greenhouse is really close to the house, you could even use bluetooth to make the serial connection to the gobetwino computer. They sell them on ebay for about $12. They all seem to be class 2 (from what I've seen), which goes max 30 meters, but according to Sir Google it's usually about 10 meters. I bought one not too long ago, and it is very easy to use to set up a serial connection to my Mac (which has built-in bluetooth), and even to my Android. I'll have to try if it will work from the closest window in the house to my greenhouse.

I agree with you on the pricing of adding extra arduinos at about $30 a pop, which is why I've been thinking of porting some of these simple sketches to the TI MSP430, which is only $4.30 (includes shipping even). I bought 2 before element14 sent me an Arduino nano and got me hooked. Two wireless transceivers would be about $5 on eBay. The difficult part would be getting the libraries ported though. I don't own wireless transceivers yet either, so I have no idea how hard or easy they would be to use.

The MSP430's are nice though, and from what I can tell they will do pretty much everything people tend to do with Arduinos. It even has a built-in temperature sensor, so for the greenhouse project that's one less sensor to hook up. The Eclipse IDE is much more complicated though - thankfully I use the same IDE for much of my other work, but I can see that being a struggle for non-programmers. I'm hoping the community will port the whole Arduino software set to work with those, because they sure are a lot more accessible for people on a budget!

So after all that rambling... yes, I think you have the easiest solution!

ps, I just noticed that there's a couple of Arduinos on eBay going at just under $20 (after shipping) with no bids, ending in 6 hrs... I'm tempted to buy one, as that would make the wifi easy to test, but how many dev boards can I have before I need an intervention?   but then again, under $20 means I don't have to deal with customs...

Cheers,

-Nico

Hi Nico

Thanks for the encouragement!

I'm intending to test Gobetwino on Windows 7 later today. I'll let you know.

The idea of using bluetooth is amazing, especially as my netbook includes a bluetooth component, but I have never used it and, indeed, have no idea how to use it. I've looked on eBay & I will have to pay about £10 GBP - a little more than you - but since they all originate from the far-east, I'm a little hesitant after I got my fingers burnt with a very cheap SD card module.

I guess I will also have to commit to another arduino soon - whilst the one I have is logging data, I can't do any more development work....

All the best

Neil

Hi Nico

Good news and frustrating news:

1. The Excel test sketch supplied in the Gobetwino samples works fine in XP.

2. Gobetwino runs in windows 7 (starter) and your demo notepad sketch works just fine.

3. I can open OpenOffice calc via Gobetwino in Windows 7 and get a spreadsheet, but when I substitute that app for excel in the Gobetwino sample, the spreadsheet opens, the commands seem to parse OK, but no numbers arrive in the sheet and Gobetwino says the process has ended after the first set of commands - the rest simply error.

However, if I remove the loop from the sketch, so only one line of data is sent, All the commands seem to run OK, except that the application doesn't open until all the commands have been sent and there is nothing in the sheet, and there is no attempt to save the file, as there is with excel in XP

I tried putting in a delay between the command to open the application and starting to send data, so I could be sure the sheet was open - 5 secs not enough; 10 secs and I got 2 correct numbers in A1 and B1 and the active cell moved to A2.

I put the loop back in to read and send 15 sets of data at 2 second intervals - this time I only got 1 (wrong) number and then Gobetwino decided the process had terminated.

Next I increased the delay between the readings from 2 secs to 5 secs - This time I got 2 correct numbers and the active cell moved to A2, but again Gobetwino decided the process had terminated after the first set of data, so everything else was errors

Finally - I've had enough for now - I tried increasing the delay between the readings to 10 secs and I got the same result as before.

I am fairly new to windows 7 and also to Open office, so I don't really know where to look. I find it confusing that Gobetwino thinks the process has terminated but the spreadsheet is still open.

I will be off the air until next week - I'm off to Paris for a few days - relaxation!

Best wishes

Neil

Hi Neil,

That's too bad - it always looks so easy doesn't it? but then the details often hurt.

If all goes well I might give it a try later this week using OO on XP.

And yes I remember something about the SD card pain conversation. So far I haven't had any issues with the little gadgets I've bought on eBay, but they haven't been as complicated as an SD card.

Hope you have an awesome time in Paris! I guess that's one of the advantages of living in Europe - all the cool places are relatively close! For me Paris would take quite a long time - living on the West coast of Canada kinda puts us far from everywhere!

Cheers,

-Nico

Hi again,

Yeah I gave into temptation and just bought another Arduino-Nano and 2x nrf24l01+ wireless cards - about $20 for all so that's not too bad.

So that should allow me to send and receive data between two arduino boards over a longer distance than with the bluetooth.

I shied away from getting the SD card module... for now

Haven't had time for the gobetwino-openoffice data logging yet, but this weekend is looking really good.

Cheers,

-Nico

Hi again,

Yeah I gave into temptation and just bought another Arduino-Nano and 2x nrf24l01+ wireless cards - about $20 for all so that's not too bad.

So that should allow me to send and receive data between two arduino boards over a longer distance than with the bluetooth.

I shied away from getting the SD card module... for now

Haven't had time for the gobetwino-openoffice data logging yet, but this weekend is looking really good.

Cheers,

-Nico

Hi Neil,

Gobetwino with Open Office on XP seems to behave well for me. It opens OO, then starts typing things into the fields reliably.

I couldn't figure out how to handle a timestamp in the time I had this morning, but it looks like it should be possible. It's hard to debug, since the Serial output goes to Gobetwino.

I made a new blog post for the details and the sketch: http://www.element14.com/community/people/ntewinkel/blog/2012/03/26/gobetwino-with-open-office

My wife kicked the tomato plants out of the house, so they are all in the greenhouse now - which means I really want to get this thing up and running soon to see if they're in any danger!

Cheers,

-Nico

Hi Nico,

Back from Paris - it wasn't long enough, but the weather was amazing for the time of year!

Congratulations with OO in XP - I was having trouble with OO in W7.

Outside of that, I also couldn't get time stamps to work, but I have achieved a breakthrough for me:

1. Running a sketch on Arduino UNO connected to my W7 netbook.

2. Sending commands to Gobetwino to start Notepad on the netbook and via the command line option in Gobetwino, open an existing empty file on my desktop XP PC, via my wireless network.

3. Logging data from my temp probes and sending over the network to the file in the form 101 "," 101 "CR/LF"

4. Closing down Notepad and saving the file on the desktop after a preset number of readings.

The secret seems to be to give Notepad plenty of time to start up and open the file over the network. If you don't wait long enough, some of the data gets lost.

Can you see the scenario - Arduino and netbook in the Greenhouse; desktop PC in my office.....sit down after breakfast and check the file.....go out later & reset the arduino.....long term, I want to try the bluetooth, because I don't want to leave the netbook out in the Greenhouse all the time.

My tomato plants are out in my Greenhouse as well........looking OK so far

All the best

Neil

PS - I will set up my own blog to document all this for anyone who might be interested.

Hi Neil,

That's great! Good idea about using Notepad - much quicker to start and less stuff that can go wrong. I had something like a 10 second delay just to make sure. I think you can also do a serial.read() which (I think) waits to get the result from the program startup.

I was thinking of maybe looking into the gobetwino logging feature as well, which makes the timestamps easier. So in the command you'd have to choose the one for logfile.

And I suppose for either case you could have it type the data into a .csv file (it kinda looks like that's what you are doing already?), and then it can be imported as a spreadsheet for graphing or whatnot.

And yes, I totally see the scenario. Have you actually been running it like that already?

I've been busy all week trying to get all my other work done so I can get this installed in my greenhouse soon too. I'm still having a bit of trouble getting my LM34 Fahrenheit sensor to give believeable temperatures though.

My tomato plants are looking pretty happy too. It being end of March I think the chance of a hard frost getting into the greenhouse is pretty slim now. Forecast says we still dip down to 0 C every night though...

Looking forward to seeing your blog too!

Cheers,

-Nico

Hi Nico,

I think the initial serial read gets the program PID after startup. However, the bigger issue is waiting for the file to open on the networked PC.....watching the screen, Notepad seems to open fairly qickly on the W7 device, but with an untitled (ie new) file. Some time later - several seconds, the filename displayed changes to be the one specified in the gobetwino command line parameter. I had to put in another delay to make sure I didn't start sending data too soon.

The gobetwino logging feature does look interesting, because of the timestamps - I may get to try that as well, locally first and then over the network.

Sadly, my setup is only running with the netbook and desktop side by side on my desk - I keep thinking of reasons not to take the arduino and the netbook out into the greenhouse just yet.

My latest idea is rather than leave the desktop switched on overnight, get the netbook/arduino to log data to a local file and then when it has finished - after a specific number of samples -  to ping the desktop and wait until it is there and then copy the data file over the network to the desktop.

I have tested the gobetwino file copy (but not over the network yet). I haven't tried the gobetwino pingt.

I am using LM35 temp monitors - they are OK but they have problems of their own - I haven't sorted all of those out yet, but if I take enough readings (100) at say 20mS intervals and take an average, I get reasonable results.

I wish I had more time - including time to write a blog about all my adventures with the arduino greenhouse data logger. I'll get to it soon!

All the best

Neil

Hi Neil,

I see - that file open would add a fair chunk of time, especially over the network.

Would it be possible to just write the file on the netbook in a shared folder, and then use the other computer to connect to the netbook's share in the morning?

I think the LM35 might be just the Centigrade version of the Fahrenheit sensor I have (or vice versa), so in theory they likely get hooked up the same way. Did you have to add a resistor to it?

Tomorrow being, theoretically at least, a "day of rest" I should be entitled to some tinkering time, methinks!

Cheers,

-Nico