Sensor Area Networks (SANs)

[nedb]

(06-08-2013 22:29)davidmbrady Wrote:  That would be 'C' as in Comfort Units... LOL My pool is 72.08 Comforts!

I thought Comfort Units were 'C'ookies :-)

Quote:BTW, the HTTP Post that my gateway sends is only 40 bytes. I'm realizing that it's better to send data periodically then to waste bandwidth on keepalives.

More sensors would increase it, but not much.

It would be fun to get some free data from the cellular network via the cloud. Do you think the cloud is storing location information, like the location of the cell tower you connected to when you upload? I don't see any reference to it in the XML output of 'get' you posted, but they might have it for you if you ask nice. If you got 'position' without transmitting it from the metered account, that'd be nice.

But you probably will have to integrate coach-based GPS into the data to get that info. I don't really know. Maybe cellular companies have developer kits with APIs for getting all kinds of info off the tower. Anyway, cell towers have GPS, but I think they only use it for the time tick.

Quote:Also, we're not married to the Digi Device Cloud, any device cloud will do and there's several to choose from. I do like the idea of using a device cloud though. Remember this is a mobile SAN. The device cloud acts like a Domain Name Server for XBee internet gateways. As the bus travels across cell site boundaries IP addresses come and go, the device cloud hides the nastiness of all this. WaGu simply passes it login credentials and an XBee name and the device cloud resolves this to a physical location and IP address. The device cloud also provides a pretty slick HTTP/XML interface to do everything we need to monitor and control.

Looked like a MAC address in the XML <xpExtAddr>. Or maybe it was the tower's IPv6 address? IPv6 just confuses me

I did create a free cloud acount good for up to 5 devices. Haven't signed up for any services or dev kits though. I didn't see anywhere to get the Gateway software for a laptop, looks like it might be part of a dev kit.

So far so good, it does look nice and light. I'm trying to gauge whether the value added by the cloud is worth the cost. An existing MiFi cellular data account would be addressable over the 'net, but I haven't looked very hard at the effort needed to do command and control. I did see an 'Internet accessible' thermostat at Lowes not too long ago. That might be a first step, but like the cloud of Digi's, it probably involves someone else's server in the middle.

Still, I'm getting a kick out of your pool monitor. Imagine monitoring your pool temperature from the banks of Puget Sound~it does suggest possibilities.

How about a pool cam?