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

    I am thinking of taking a temperature reading once every hour. Data collection ideally would be done every day. That being said, capacity would need to be there to store if a day is missed. I don’t see the data collection and retention capacity as an issue. I will do some testing to confirm the requirements of storing date/time and two temperature values.
     

    My big concern is how to transfer the data from the Pi to a portable laptop. The Pi is on top of a dam. An externsion cord from a work site is the only power. There is no network to use. I’m not willing to explore cellphone technology.
     

    Can bluetooth be used to transmit data. The attendant has to attend the gate to release salmon that have climbed the ladder. Can they pull the data from the Pi over a bluetooth connection. I can leave a serial connection for this but would like to keep fingers from interacting with the Pi.
     

    What about making the Pi as a wireless Access Point (AP). Can a wireless connection from the laptop accessing the AP use that network to talk to the Pi?

     

    Sean

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

    Hi Sean,

     

    Bluetooth can be used to transmit data, however this implies that the laptop also needs some software written to fetch individual records or specified content. It could be far easier for your particular scenario to use the Pi as a web server accessible by WiFi, and let the laptop user browse to it using IE, Chrome, etc. That way no additional software is needed to be written to access/download the data or view graphs, etc., and any laptop can then be used, or mobile device, without having to write an app.

     

    Google search reveals the Pi can be configured in AP mode, I've not tried this but it's a reputable site:

    https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-3-as-an-access-point

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  • mcb1
    0 mcb1 over 7 years ago

    Sean

    My approach would be different to that suggested so far.

     

    I'd use an Arduino based controller with SD card, realtime clock, and a couple of waterproof DS18B20 devices.

    This will easily log the data for many days, and consumes much less power.

     

     

    When your man attends, he simply presses a button (to halt any recording) removes the SD card and replaces it with another.

    The button press times out and the relevant information gets written to the new card.

    At that point you could turn on an LED indicator for xx to show it is working.

     

     

    The options for powering are solar, but you might be able to utilise the small wind powered option I eluded to here. (near the bottom)

    BT_Sentry : Bluetooth Options

     

    Other nice options could be using eINK displays to show status, or other information.

    Self-adjusting clock with e-display

     

     

    There are other LoRA options to feed data out, or transfer it, but keeping it simple is the better solution IMO.

     

     

    Cheers

    Mark

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

    Hi Sean I recently was doing a test on the RPI on a Bitscope  single an quad  carrier and I needed a 3-4 foot square Solar panel to even start to drive a Pi.

    It wasn't a permanent set up and had no battery but it shows that you need quite a lick of power to  run these devices even whilst starting up as well as a requirement to charge a battery for dark operation.

    Agreed a zero or a PI with the power management configured well would be much better but it shows how you must size your panel quite generously for reliable operation !

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  • danielw
    0 danielw over 7 years ago

    I'm leaning toward the approach of mcb1.  I've relegated my PI B to monitoring temps in my house / garage using DS18B20 sensors.  If I wasn't wanting to access the data wirelessly, and I didn't have the PI sat in a box, I would have gone with an arduino for the lower power consumption. Over the past year I've had a few lockups that are fixed with a power cycle.  Weirdly it hasn't done it during summer (Yet)  It's in the garage and it's about 30 - 35C in there most days at the moment so it can't be an overheating issue!

     

    I've used AVR / Arduinos before but instead of SD card I used a separate eeprom.  Data storage was infrequent and sequential so I wasn't concerned about exceeding the maximum number of writes in the eeprom.  It Could run from 12V and NiMh battery.  When plugged in the battery charged up. The clock and calender was implemented in software, and ran from battery for a few days between charges using the low power modes of the AVR to increase battery life.

     

    Also if I can I fit an LED indicator.  We sometimes omit them to save pennies,  But it costs when you are trying to support a 'box' over the phone and don't even know if power is getting to it.

    If there's a processor I try to use a regular heartbeat, 2 or 3S that slows to 6S when on battery.  I also use as short an LED on time as possible to minimise power consumption.

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  • rew
    0 rew over 7 years ago in reply to danielw

    I don't optimize led-on-time anymore. I use (green) leds that are "uncomfortably bright" when on 130 microamps, so I run them around 50microamps.....

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  • colporteur
    0 colporteur over 7 years ago

    Great feedback folks. Almost said gentleman and then realized I can't tell from your monikers what gender you associated with. The discussion around using an Ardunio caused me to recall a story that made me laugh.

     

    My uncle and his wife were was playing cards with the minister and his wife. At the end of every hand the minister would examine all the cards played and look at the if's. If you played this card then this would have happened or maybe this would be a better play. The after hand analysis on every round was beginning to annoy my uncle. You can't change what is already played so why continue to go over every card. At one point my uncles frustration got the better of him and he shouted "IF, IF, IF...IF your aunt had balls she would be your uncle."

     

    The card table went silent. My uncle who wasn't pron to outburst was embarrassed but had enough of the if. My project is using a Raspberry Pi. If I was using a Ardunio then it would be about a Ardunio. I am considering after building the prototype and doing some evaluation over a season of whether looking at a more robust design is warranted.

     

    The people that do this monitoring today, love to visit the dam everyday and watch the fish. Manually taking a temperature reading is nothing bothersome to them. My passion for technology is introducing this change. The monitors didn't even think about it. I would like to build on this and give the site a social media presence. Salmon preservation needs people to be aware and concerned. Getting more visibility would aid that endeavor.

     

    The suggestions for retrieving the data are all viable but none stand out. The user of this have limited knowledge. Changing cards is a thought but I do not them to have that responsibility. I am pursuing a data collection solution that is simple and has minimal complexity. Sync a bluetooth device and then calling a download routine seems to be simple. I am away from my development platform at the moment so exploring the AP concept is stalled. I really like walking up to the dam with a laptop and executing a script that pulls the data. I'm thinking if every pull extracts the whole dataset and not the delta that might be of value.

     

    I appreciate this opportunity to whiteboard the project. A wise man learns from his mistakes. A smart man doesn't make the mistakes because he learns from others who have already learned from their mistakes.

     

    Sean

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

    As mentioned, a web browser would eliminate complexity. On the one hand you mention the users have limited knowledge, but on the other hand you mention the execution of scripts to pull data, so it's confusing.

    Not only that, but as mentioned, pulling data by executing scripts would mean you've now got to code an application on the PC too, and maintain that. Using a web browser means Microsoft/Apple/Google will maintain the browser for you.

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

    Look in to  setting up a LoRa based network or just point to point at low bit rates it's capable of several KM  paticularly if you can get it to be line of sight with each other!

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  • Problemchild
    0 Problemchild over 7 years ago in reply to rew

    Indeed if you have a nano amp problem just get some more nano amps!!!

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