Remote monitoring wirelessly

dorkygrin

New Member
Using a picaxe (or not):

I'm looking for some simple technology that I can use on an always-on Windows PC to read all kinds of sensors. And perhaps control some stuff. All wirelessly. Stuff like this:
* Instant read of what the inside and outside temperature is. Including data logging.
* Instant read of the temperature is of the refrigerator. Text alert if it falls below threshold.
* Text alert if the smoke detector or carbon monoxide detector is activated.
* Text alert if a motion sensor is activated
* Remote turn on/off of specific lights or outlets or garage door.

I just can't figure out a simple and inexpensive way to do this. Xbee might be part of the answer, but I'm just not sure yet.

I do have some experience with basic Picaxe stuff, it's easy and cheap, right up my alley. Seems like there outta be an obvious technology out there (Didn't X10 stuff used to be promotoed as the cats-meow?)

Open to ideas, Thanks!

DG
 

boriz

Senior Member
When you say 'instant', you mean upon request or frequently updated?

Picaxe can interface to PC

Picaxe can interface to wireless transceivers.

Picaxe can interface to various remote sensors.

There are examples on this forum, use Search.

You will of course need some PC software to receive and display all this data. What do you have in mind?
 

manuka

Senior Member
At first glance cheap 433 MHz devices are the obvious KISS approach, but more information indeed needed.

Budget? What range? Any interference? How are your sensor readers to be powered? Solar? Mains? Battery? Although the likes of Li coin cells may be tempting, battery life may be a really significant issue for "always on" circuitry - the likes of backyard weather stations often run run into this woe...
 

Pauldesign

Senior Member
From my understanding, your project is in two parts: 1) DAQ (data acquisition) 2) Wireless transmission.

If i were you, i'll do both separately them combine in the end.

First get the DAQ part to work, then transmit via wired and if all goes well, proceed to wireless (depending on your budget, brain power, application wireless link could be via: IR, RF ISM, RF ZigBEE, GSM, GPRS, LASER, WIFI, BLUETOOTH, Power-lines, Ultrasound, Internet etc)

Once again, nearly all the above have been implemented on this forum, all you've to do is to search, search, search. Choose your interested wireless tech, get your hands dirty and others on the forum will be honoured to wash it for you :)
 

westaust55

Moderator
Firstly you need to consider some parameters/specifications before you can settle upon or discount some wireless technologies.
1. How many devices and whether needs to be readily expanded
2. How much data to be sent from each remote device
3. Required speed of communications (baud rate)
4. Does each remote device communicate direct to PC or a central PICAXE/Rx module
5. Can the remote devices be grouped and maybe each group hard wired to. PICAXE/Tx module
6. Range to be covered for longest wireless link
7. What obstruction, if any, prevent line of sight
8 what is the available budget

Without a spec, you may end up with sorts of ideas that might otherwise be readily discounted as not viable.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
It all seems perfectly possible. ZigBee was designed for this sort of thing so XBee may be the answer and there are other alternatives.
 

Reloadron

Senior Member
I can tell you how I would approach things. Get yourself a nice sharp pencil (with eraser) and a pad of paper.

* Instant read of what the inside and outside temperature is. Including data logging.
That would be a few Analog DAQ channels.
* Instant read of the temperature is of the refrigerator. Text alert if it falls below threshold.
That would be another Analog DAQ channel and I believe you mean if temperature exceeds a limit.
* Text alert if the smoke detector or carbon monoxide detector is activated.
That would be a few Digital DAQ channels.
* Text alert if a motion sensor is activated
Another Digital DAQ channel.
* Remote turn on/off of specific lights or outlets or garage door.
Additional Digital I/O (In / Out) channels.
So what needs done is figure out all the devices you wish to monitor or control and their DAQ channel assignments such as Digital In / Out or Analog In / Out. With that done and leave spare channels for future additions you start looking at the DAQ device be it PICAXE or any other device. You may not want or need all channels to be wireless as for some wired may be practical.

Using some software to send email or SMS Text from an online PC is relatively easy. Matter of fact depending on cellular carrier it can be done with a few lines of script. I do it with my US Verizon account all the time.

So all in all I would start at the beginning as has been suggested and decide what you want and the hardware needs.

Ron
 

ciseco

Senior Member
We do this type of thing day in day out. You can mix off the shelf battery powered sensors with home brew picaxe sensors. The XRF is really easy to connect to a Picaxe, see here for a quick idea. It's similar TI hardware to the wixel but much greater range (max 1Km) as it runs at 868/900/915Mhz. Tuned 433Mhz versions due very soon.

http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?21110-AXE401-kit-4-wires-an-XRF-and-2-mins-wireless&p=203514#post203514

and here's a simple 08M example on building a temp sensor

http://openmicros.org/index.php/articles/78-microcontroller-projects/70-picaxe-08m-wireless-aprotocol-sensor

Next week we hope to launch free "copy and paste" code to turn an 18M2 or Arduino or Mbed into an instant wireless sensor. All you do is send simple text commands like
(address of device) (pin) (action) looks a bit like AA C.8 HIGH. With having AA to ZZ that gives upto 676 seprately addressable devices on a single nework, you can have over 65,000 different networks so over 40 milliion possible nodes.

There's hardware to build a gateway between RF, ethernet and WiFi with 3G/GPRS support coming too. Most is opensource in one way or another.
 

dorkygrin

New Member
Trying to hit all the questions:

Budget is about $150. This will be for use at a remote cottage. Likely never more than 100' from any one sensor, most within 50'. Inside sensors must transmit through paneling walls. Transmit directly to PC. Or perhaps a Picaxe/Rx module if that is easier.

Not sure what software on PC to use for data collection. Was thinking maybe starting with 6 devices. Receive temp readings every minute. Or perhaps the PC can poll for the temps. All wireless sensors will be using batteries - unsure what capacity is needed here. I've got a bunch of sensors around my house from a no-longer-used security system that uses Lion batteries, I don't think they got drained very quickly. These sensors are door sensors, glass breakage sensor, fire alarm sensor. I suppose I could incorporate them somehow, If I can figure out how they transmit to the old ADT system.

Baud rate - these don't need to be fast. I was reading that the Xbee stuff is 9600 baud, plenty fast.

I think this answers the questions. I'm leaning toward Xbee with Picaxe.

Thanks for all of your feedback !
 

manuka

Senior Member
Glad we're giving you food for thought! Along with extensive planning I find it's also essential to actually do the proof of concept wireless footwork too. Numerous issues may otherwise arise that reveal holes in ones approach!

FWIW the Chinese crowd Dorji also make a combo sensor/433 MHz transmitter module that may have appeal. Although ~$20 it's dead easy to use. See Microzed's listing
 

Reloadron

Senior Member
Hi Ya Again

I received your PM and go figure huh? Not quite everyday you find someone close to your location, that was so funny. I'll be happy to help anyway I can.

Moving along you mentioned early on using a PC to do this. Now if the PC in question is running a Windows Operating System and is always on I'll give you a little something to experiment with, especially since you mentioned SMS text message. Sending an SMS Text message to a cell phone in some cases is pretty easy. Not always but many times so let's try something. You don't even need programming skills for this. The following is a little VBSscipt code routine easily done in Notepad.

Code:
Set objMessage = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
objMessage.Subject = "Example CDO Notification Message" 
objMessage.From = "me@my.com"
objMessage.To = "**********@vtext.com;me@myemail.com"
objMessage.TextBody = "This is some sample message text."
objMessage.Send
The above code will send an SMS text message as well as an email as it is set up. Part of getting this to work involves using the cellular company gateway. I happen to use Verizon and thus we see objMessage.To = "**********@vtext.com;me@myemail.com" and the 10 Astrix are my 10 digit cell number as in the area code plus the seven digit number then we have ; followed by an email address. Obviously the phone and email would be real. :)

This is a list of SMS Gateway codes for cellular carriers. If you scroll down to Verizon Wireless you will see why and how I included the @vtext.com in my code sample above. The objMessage.From = "me@my.com" can be left as is for experimenting. I suggest you copy and paste the above code sample into Notepad in windows then click File and Save As giving the file a name like PhoneHome.vbs and this is important, you do not want to save the file as plain text but a .vbs file. So in the save dialog box do not save as Text but All Files making sure the name has a .vbs extension as I wrote it. To make things simple save the file to your desktop. Now double click the saved file. You should get an SMS text as well as an email.

Generally I would create several such small files and place them in a folder. Then the code written to monitor your hardware uses an If/Then routine to send a message based on inputs. So if you want to play around with the above script with your cell carrier have at it and see if it works for you. There are other ways to do it and this is but one method to try.

Ron
 

Buzby

Senior Member
Hi Ron,

I tried the VBS, but get this error. ( Windows XP Pro SP3 )

VBS_SMS_error.png

Could it be because I don't use Outlook for my emails, or IE for my web stuff, so maybe these programs auto-configure something in Windows.

Thanks,

Buzby
 

Reloadron

Senior Member
I have seen that error only when going through a business server, not on a normal home account. Your email client software shouldn't matter. I have used it with Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Mail and a few others. Normal home system correct?

Ron
 

Buzby

Senior Member
Hi Ron,

It's officially a works laptop, but I use it mostly at home on my broadband, and have loads of my own programs on it.

I don't want to hijack this thread any further, so I'll Google for an answer.

Thanks,

Buzby
 

dorkygrin

New Member
I had the same issue but I think it is because I'm not using a mail client. I've been using webmail for years. I guess I could set up Outlook Express and test it but it looks like it could work nicely.

Thanks for the tip!

JC



Hi Ron,

I tried the VBS, but get this error. ( Windows XP Pro SP3 )

View attachment 11088

Could it be because I don't use Outlook for my emails, or IE for my web stuff, so maybe these programs auto-configure something in Windows.

Thanks,

Buzby
 

Reloadron

Senior Member
A Google of "the send using configuration value is invalid" will bring up several possible causes for the error. Depending on the email server there are several solutions which involve adding some code. I get that error at work where our mail runs through a secured server system. From home I use a few accounts including my own server for a web I have and also my cable account (Roadrunner) and the short script works fine. So it is open to mess around with. :)

Ron
 
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