Anyone up for an IIOT Relay Race? (Ignoble Internet of Things)

RE: Anyone up for an IIOT Relay Race? (Ignoble Internet of Things)

beacon_dave — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 23:10:37 GMT

It looks like 1960's teletype potentially been added to the list of communications methods [emoticon:c4563cd7d5574777a71c318021cbbcc8]

/challenges-projects/element14-presents/project-videos/w/documents/27567/episode-546-mapping-the-outputs-of-a-1960s-teletype-machine---how-hard-can-it-be?CommentId=0e4e2102-c08d-4751-a177-d887ddc70986

It would be quite interesting and fun to take parts of the relay off-Internet however it could also potentially cause some issues. If too much of it is off the Internet then you perhaps start to lose the ability to track the activity throughout the duration of the event and there is no sure way of knowing if it is still going on off-Internet just very slowly or if it has failed. It also becomes less of a 'spectator event' if viewers aren't getting regular updates.

A peer-to-peer format relay is probably more true to the spirit of things however it does have a significant issue in what happens if any one node fails. In a true event that would be relay race over, which isn't much fun for all those participants waiting for their turn. Related to this is how does each participating node know who to contact next and what happens if that node has to pull out at short notice or reschedule their slot with minimal administration overhead, given the issue of time zones etc. This could result in an unsuccessful attempt at completing the relay.

Starting out, it may be that by having a high availability node coordinating the relay race may help keep it going by having each participating node providing activity status (ready / active / complete) and then the relay race coordinator node assigning the next node which is reporting a ready status. If a node doesn't complete within a given agreed timeout period then the coordinator node moves things onto the next participating node showing a ready status. If a queued participating node becomes inactive whilst waiting then it is skipped over but still gets another chance if it becomes active again. Every participating node gets a chance. The co-ordinator node could also take care of automatically posting regular status updates as the relay race progresses. The longest chain of successful consecutive nodes then becomes the target to beat the next time round. In order to keep things running though some nodes could perhaps be designed to be re-triggerable, so if the active node queue runs out, then those nodes will run again giving time for new nodes to join in. This may help with time-zone related issues.

With off-Internet sections, then the gateway nodes could perhaps declare this with the coordinator node which then allows for a longer timeout period and specifies the second gateway node to acknowledge complete status from. There however would be a lack of automated status updates during this period and if prolonged, would rely on those participants to post any comments about the activity to keep interest. You could also consider domino train type races where multiple nodes could be triggered to run simultaneously which would allow for really slow nodes to participate as well.

What is actually getting relayed needs some thought. If it is a text message then the maximum size of the message will need to be declared as a participant could potentially be limited physically (e.g. if they are loading scrabble tiles into a fixed number of individual train wagons for them to be scanned by OCR at the destination station), or some people may want to display it on a small display (imagine a micro:bit trying to scroll 1,000 words one character at a time). If it is a teletype, there may be a limited character set and as this is a global community then their may be language considerations as well. It could be that the participating node specifies its message capability with the coordinator node when registering as a participant and then gets passed an appropriate version of the message when its turn comes up. Participant nodes just wanting to turn on LEDs wouldn't need to be passed a message (or they could perhaps be given a word count value instead). Messages could potentially also be extended to other formats as well. It depends if this is to be more of a message type relay race or more of a Rube Goldberg Machine.

Another consideration is how do you broadcast / document the event effectively both as it takes place and afterwards. 500 participants turning on a LED and the whole event could be over in a matter of seconds, whereas 18 participants each taking 10minutes and you are looking at 3 hours. The idea of the telephone game is perhaps more suited to those following on-line as each node is outputting content, but perhaps a bit uneventful as digital technology will likely do a pretty good job at copying data accurately between nodes. The Rube Goldberg Machine concept is a lot of fun but is more difficult to capture remote nodes on-line in real time so relies on the uploading of videos and photos or live streaming.

RE: Anyone up for an IIOT Relay Race? (Ignoble Internet of Things)

ravi_butani — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 13:36:40 GMT

I am in for Team challenge if get planed,

I am planning for pursue Ph.D. from Europe or US and I have never published scrap research paper (Which I think no one reads and used only for lobbying (Fine word used is Paid Networking)) being hobbyist..

I would like to show my skills with this type of Team Challenge by team up with educators e14 members or senior industry person e14 members who are in EU or US and could help me to get Ph.D. admission using my real engineering skills and not by skill in plying with very heavy English words mostly used by So Called RESEARCHERS .:) .

Cheers,

RAVI

RE: Anyone up for an IIOT Relay Race? (Ignoble Internet of Things)

tariq.ahmad — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 18:26:49 GMT

Hi [mention:82dcf05dbddf4b99ae060c6cdfaacf4e:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] ,

As we wind up the year of project activity in Project14 with Makevember, RF (Radio Frequency), and the upcoming Holiday Special I will be looking for ways to shake up the Project14 program. We are discussing doing a joint competition with element14 presents and possibly doing a supplier sponsored team competition with teams based on the following conversation:

Re: Team Contests?

Thinking ahead to next year would like to some more things that are a bit different and shake the program up a bit to get new people interested and not let things get stale. Will be following this closer and would be open to any suggestions or improvements we can make to project competitions on the community and of course will share any insights you guys come up with, with the rest of the team. :-)

RE: Anyone up for an IIOT Relay Race? (Ignoble Internet of Things)

ntewinkel — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 18:59:21 GMT

That's a really fun idea [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b3672e5d-dd28-4cc0-b66d-38632a21ca24/2772.contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

I also like the extra credit challenge / flexibility of participant groups having their own method of communication.

A very easy way to achieve a relay like this in a basic form could be to add a slight modification to my MQTT Christmas tree project from last year. Each node can be custom, it wouldn't have to be Christmas trees. But it could be a holiday theme in general to tie into the upcoming e14 holiday special, with locally themed nodes for each area of the globe [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b3672e5d-dd28-4cc0-b66d-38632a21ca24/2772.contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

Connected Christmas Trees - Finished!

I was using two trees, but it can easily be expanded into a relay without any real customization. I already have it set up so that Tree 1 sends a message starting with "2" to trigger Tree 2 (which makes it flash all the lights). And Tree 2 sends a message starting with "1" to trigger Tree 1.

For a relay chain, each tree or node can just send a message with the next number. The only exception would be that the very last node needs to send back a "1" to replay the scene, or maybe it just needs to set off some fireworks at e14 HQ to show success [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b3672e5d-dd28-4cc0-b66d-38632a21ca24/6064.contentimage_5F00_2516.png:16:16]

Also, instead of having a pushbutton to trigger the next tree/node, it can simply just do that automatically (or after a few seconds). (edit: or, of course it can be via some fancy action as you said above... like a robot arm pushing a button, or anything else you can imagine)

I have the code and schematics in github: https://github.com/ntewinkel/electronics/tree/master/ConnectedXMasTrees

It's set up for WeMos D1 Mini and Witty (both are very inexpensive and easy to use ESP8266 boards), but likely not too hard to modify for other ESP based boards.

ps, I publish everything with MIT license so it's free for anyone to use and modify for whatever purpose.

Cheers,

-Nico

RE: Anyone up for an IIOT Relay Race? (Ignoble Internet of Things)

clem57 — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 18:14:17 GMT

I would be game to this idea... Thanks [mention:82dcf05dbddf4b99ae060c6cdfaacf4e:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] for the original idea.

RE: Anyone up for an IIOT Relay Race? (Ignoble Internet of Things)

DAB — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 20:10:27 GMT

Interesting idea.

DAB

RE: Anyone up for an IIOT Relay Race? (Ignoble Internet of Things)

crisdeodates — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 10:25:46 GMT

Cool idea indeed. Not only this is fun, it will allow a participation globally. Everyone would be able to contribute. That's what it really make this a community.... [emoticon:fbd079a1c4f748c5a234faee215de9cc]️

RE: Anyone up for an IIOT Relay Race? (Ignoble Internet of Things)

dixonselvan — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 09:45:00 GMT

[mention:82dcf05dbddf4b99ae060c6cdfaacf4e:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05]

Brilliant idea, this sounds like fun [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-b3672e5d-dd28-4cc0-b66d-38632a21ca24/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16] count me in. I would suggest Particle boards for this or Arduino MKR series boards with capability to post to Internet. Once we have sufficient number of participants, we'll discuss and agree upon a common method to connect, like the cloud platform required to link all the devices and place our data (let the devices be as diverse as possible!).

Before everything starts, if you are ok with, we'll connect via direct message to test our connectivity from India to your country! Let's start from blinking an LED by a remote button press.

[mention:44fa45702fda4d95b457f69505107f36:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] looping you in to see if we can integrate this idea anywhere in any Project14 theme.