Sensor Area Networks (SANs)

[davidbrady]

(05-19-2013 22:13)mbulriss Wrote:  I have been watching this with some interest. I had my engineers take a look at Arduinos, Raspberry Pi and Beagle Bones for a potential project. When you get it to the point to work like the Digitell (or Digitel?) in my old 83 PT40, then you will have a rollout product. You are adding a speech processor, right? The Digitell was a cool little helper. Hurry, I miss the "little talking man" as we used to refer to it! LOL

Mike Bulriss
1991 WB40 "Texas Minivan"
San Antonio, TX

Hi Mike,

This is really fun stuff. I just finished setting up a chat session between my windows and linux laptops over a digital radio XBee network. It works! Next step is to bring in the single chip computers (arduino, etc) to read a sensor, package the data, and display it on VMSpc or such. The first project is a cooling fan rpm gauge.

I'd love to hear more about the Digitel. I've heard of them but I don't know anything beyond that. What did they do exactly? It sounds very much ahead of its time. The next Digitel may be in the works right here... LOL

(05-20-2013 11:03)pgchin Wrote:  Hey Steve,
Do not sell yourself short! Anybody who takes apart HWH hydraulic jacks and replaces O-rings has my respect!

You got it Pete, thanks! We've seen stuff like VMSpc, Digi-Panel, and RV Tech Tools. Each of these receives data from wire stretched from one end of the bus to the other, which is fine if the wire already exists. This is true for VMSpc and RV Tech Tools, each of these take data off our J1587/J1708 networks which connect the Allison to the Detroit Diesel to the Bendix brake systems. In the case of the Digi-Panel, new wires need to be stretched. Ask anyone who did this an you'll see the arduous task involved.

What I'd like to do is implement the wires with a network of Xbee digital radio transmitters. I don't mean rip out what's there. My intention is to develop a communications fabric for new sensors. (Although, certainly existing sensors can be fed in). Plus, I'm lazy and I don't want to reinvent the wheel so if the data coming off the XBee network can be fed into an existing gauge display package, like VMSpc or RV Tech Tools, or Digi-Panel, so much the better.

So with small, cheap, and power efficient digital radios we get the benefit of no wires and a robust self-healing network. Add to this some single chip computing power (arduino, rPi, beaglebone, etc), and we can slap a sensor pod to anything we'd like to monitor. The pod will self join the network and all we need to do is create a new display gauge on our handheld or laptop. Fun???