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Raspberry Pi Forum A white board excercise on designing a Raspberry Pi temperaturing measuring device
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A white board excercise on designing a Raspberry Pi temperaturing measuring device

colporteur
colporteur over 7 years ago

Looking for input on the design of a temperature measuring device using a Raspberry Pi.
 

I would like to use this forum to do a white board design exercise on a project I am developing. One of the interactions I miss after retiring from a 37 years career in technology, is the ability to sit with a group of techies and socialize an idea to get their perspectives. I would like to try using the Element14 community for such an exercise.
 

In a closed group, I would know the backgrounds of the individuals participating and from experience be able to evaluate their have opinions. Not all opinions have value. Using this forum doesn’t afford many of the face to face controls. I would like to work around that. I suspect there will be more overhead on my part to evaluate the input. I look forward to interacting with those who wish to participate.
 

Please provide your input around designing a temperature recording device using a raspberry Pi. The term input is defined as suggestions, recommendations, best practices, directions or questions. The pi_temp u

 

Looking for input on the design of a temperature measuring device using a Raspberry Pi.
 

I would like to use this blog to do a white board design exercise on a project I am thinking of starting. One of the interactions I miss after retiring from a 37 years career in technology, is the ability to sit with a group of tech guys to socialize an idea and get perspectives you may not have thought about. I would like to try using the Element14 blog for such an exercise.
 

In a closed group, I would know the backgrounds of the individuals participating and from experience be able to evaluate their have opinions. Using this forum doesn’t afford those controls. I can accept that. I suspect there will be little more overhead on my part to evaluate the input. I look forward to inacting with those who wish to participate.
 

Please provide input around designing a temperature recording device using a raspberry Pi. The term input, can be defined as suggestions, recommendations, best practices, directions or questions. The pi_temp unit will be used to measure and record water and air temperatures in and around an Atlantic Salmon fish ladder. The ability to operate without AC power would be an advantage but not a requirement. The unit will be isolated and have no access to a communication network. Data collected should be stored locally and retrieved manually on, no predetermined schedule. The unit may be deployed in rugged conditions exposed to the elements. People deploying and operating the unit, as well as collecting the data may have little technical skills.
 

Context:

I made an offer to build a device using a Pi, for a non-profit organization that works for the preservation of Atlantic salmon, to record water and air temperature and store the data for collection. This is a volunteer project with no funding provided. All cost are out of pocket. There are no plans to make this into a commercial product. I will write for publication in a technical resource when the project is complete. I saw a manual process and thought, hey I can fix that.
 

The project provides only the personal gain of applying years of technology knowledge to assist in solving a real world problem. My retirement now affords me time to take advantage of some of the offerings in the Element14 community.
 

Before starting the final design, I will make a post on this forum containing a list of the requirements I have gathered and hope to achieve in the project. This is mean’t to be a white board dialog exercise (experiment) to solicit input from tech folks. I welcome your participation.

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  • DAB
    0 DAB over 7 years ago

    Hi Sean,

     

    I think you will find a good group here at element14 to discuss technical issues with.

     

    After I retired about 15 years ago I found a great group here and have enjoyed many technical discussions.

     

    The Rpi will work with most of the digital sensors, but it lacks any A/D capability for analog sensors.

     

    If you need to do remote sensors I would look at the more energy efficient processors and dump the data to SD cards.

     

    DAB

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  • colporteur
    0 colporteur over 7 years ago

    I am sorry folks, it appears my fat fingers resting over the touch pad below the keyboard made some edits I would have preferred to not have. Nothing was omitted in the post just repeat. My apologies again.

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  • genebren
    0 genebren over 7 years ago

    Hi Sean,

     

    I would start out by pointing out that a Raspberry Pi is an awfully big hammer for such a simple task as capturing and storing a couple of temperatures.  This is related to the cost of a RPI and the energy to run one.  There are several other available devices that might be better suited to the job, based on cost and potential battery life.  Also, it was not clear to me if this was a device that would be left in place (for continuous monitoring) or moved from site to site to collect measurements in an assisted sampling process?

     

    Otherwise, this sounds like an interesting project that could benefit those working to assist in the preservation of Atlantic salmon (or potentially other species).  I worked with a company that developed survey instrumentation for people involved in monitoring the health of fish populations (length, weight, species, tag info, etc.).  There seems to be a few other companies/organizations that are also looking into these same sort of things, so looking first to see what is already out there would be a good idea.

     

    Good luck,

    Gene

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  • colporteur
    0 colporteur over 7 years ago in reply to DAB

    Thank you for the response. I appreciate the Pi is not ideal for the application. If this was an commercial engineering project I would explore a wider range of products or find a product already designed. I love Pi's and thought, hey why not solve this problem with one. Thanks again.

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  • colporteur
    0 colporteur over 7 years ago in reply to genebren

    Thanks Gene your point is valid. I have limited my device choice to the Pi because I am just playing in what I like. I also consider an Ardunio as an option but would like to explore Pi first.

     

    Currently there is one site (fish ladder) that is visited twice a day, to record the water temperature and release any fish contained in the counting gates. A rather long extension cord provides power to a camera used by a TV station at the site. Not sure if that will be available going forward.

     

    MY battery thoughts were, what if the unit was deployed at a site that had no power. I recall reading about a weather project using a Pi that was solar powered. I would consider a power support option in design. I'm thinking Pi zero is the best choice because of lower power requirements.

     

    Really appreciate your input.

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  • shabaz
    0 shabaz over 7 years ago

    Hi Sean,

     

    The Pi may be better suited to aggregate the information from multiple devices, and process it, and upload it somewhere. The Pi would excel at that. I'm not sure of the entire requirements, but from the ones listed, a microcontroller approach would be better because of the points already mentioned by others. The Pi has been used in unusual locations (e.g. ballooning, etc) but it could be better to design or use something already rugged, lower power and ready for running at (say) cold temperatures. But I know nothing about the Atlantic, or Atlantic salmon apart from eating it : ( so I'm just assuming things like temperature could be an issue.

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  • colporteur
    0 colporteur over 7 years ago

    Not sure if posting to my own comment is acceptable or if editing the original post is preferred. Good and bad to both.

     

    I have started the build (bill) of materials.

     

    BoM

    -Pi 3

    -3A power supply

    -16G SD card

    -weatherproof enclosure

     

    -DS3231 Real time clock Module

    -2X DS18B20 Temperature sensor

     

    Design criteria under consideration

    Provide air and water temperature

    Management of data collection schedule

    Management of data storage

    How to communicate with a Pi to extract data

     

    Enter contest for PiJuice battery unit

     

     

    Sean

    DS3231 Clock Module

    DS18B20 Temperature sensor

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  • a531016
    0 a531016 over 7 years ago in reply to colporteur

    Sean,

     

    That is certainly the approach I would (and have) taken in the past. I like to affordability and compatibility of the BS18B20 sensors, and you can buy waterproof versions for the water sensing. You don't need any ADC circuitry, and a one-off "offset" calibration should do the job. I have had up to 4 connected in series to the single gpio on a PI.

     

    I have done a couple of things with the readings:

    1. save to text file, and SSH to retrieve
    2. Store in a mySQL database and serve by web page (Apache and PHP) as table, download file or graph
    3. or send as recorded to an API to save remotely (maybe best for a battery option, so the results are saved as you go).

     

    I have used Cron to request the recording (15 min intervals), although depending on your required log frequency and time period, a python script may be better. Of course a hybrid of "local cache" and send to server is probably wise - belt and braces!

     

    David

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  • colporteur
    0 colporteur over 7 years ago in reply to a531016

    Thanks for the feedback on temperature sensor. My plan was to use two of them. I have ordered waterproof versions from an online website. Relatively inexpensive. I have no experience with the devices. What I found online regarding them appears to be pretty straight forward. I have some experience with DHT11 & DHT22 temp sensors.

     

    Ideally I would like to use SSH, but there is no network.  Now I was thinking of using a serial connection but that requires user intervention to make connection. I was hoping there was some suggestion of bluetooth capabilities. I also thought of making the Pi an access point and seeing if a connection could be established that way. Any suggestions along these lines or others would be appreciated.

     

    If I consider battery supply, then reducing it power footprint (i.e. transmitting signals) would be important.

     

    Appreciate your insight.

     

    Sean

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  • a531016
    0 a531016 over 7 years ago in reply to colporteur

    Sean,

     

    A little more detail may be helpful if you can provide it?

    1. For what period will the device be deployed between human interaction?
    2. What logging frequency do you need to achieve?
    3. Are there any GSM networks (texting the data could be an option)?

     

    From what you have said, and thinking about power conservation, I think appending your logs to a text file as they are recorded would be more efficient than running a database engine. Also having a script that fired when a usb flash storage device is attached is more frugal from a power consumption point of view than anything wireless (bluetooth, wifi or GSM). This would allow a human with no skill to retrieve the data, but you would want some LEDs to indicate the copy and completion status? Does that sound like a viable option?

     

    Also I would avoid installing a full OS with a GUI (command line only) and maybe consider an older PI or a PI 0 for the project, as they have lower power consumption, and processing power or RAM shouldn't be an issue for this project (my before mentioned project is running on a RPI B).

     

    David

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