Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

davidbrady · 05-20-2013, 11:39

(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 Smile

(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??? Smile

***patticake*** · 05-22-2013, 21:18

I'm beginning to understand what ya'll want to do, and it sounds exciting. I would love to monitor items on the bus electronically and more accurate than the analog gauges that are there now. Plus add sensors to stuff that doesn't have any now.

konehd · 05-23-2013, 11:21

Been watching this for a while, and its interesting! Be fun to implement on our coaches...

Heres a link to a guy who has it working... Not a mesh net, he is using canbus...

http://roadwarrior.free-man.com/can/

Be nice to see if the code and hardware would port over. And if he would share?

/Joe

davidbrady · 05-23-2013, 12:20

Thanks Joe,

I really appreciate the interest. By all means let's look around to see what's already out there. I don't want to reinvent the wheel (remember, I'm lazy)! Smile

I need to look at his work more closely. Immediately what I notice is that it seems he ran out of steam almost exactly a year ago. He had a lot of good ideas but there's a lot of empty pages and links. Since he did his work the world seems to have exploded with XBee and alternative single board computers with a lot of open source and community support available. It's this excitement and groundswell for Arduino/rPi/XBee/ZigBee that's sweeping me along. Other technologies look good but I don't want to swim upstream, which we very well might be doing by adopting CAN as he did. I'm very reluctant to stretch wires, but extremely excited to add cloud management, monitoring, and control. In any case, we can definitely learn from everyone's experience - I'll look more closely at his solution.

Thanks!

konehd · 05-23-2013, 14:47

(05-23-2013 12:20)davidmbrady Wrote: Thanks Joe,

I really appreciate the interest. By all means let's look around to see what's already out there. I don't want to reinvent the wheel (remember, I'm lazy)!

I need to look at his work more closely. Immediately what I notice is that it seems he ran out of steam almost exactly a year ago. He had a lot of good ideas but there's a lot of empty pages and links. Since he did his work the world seems to have exploded with XBee and alternative single board computers with a lot of open source and community support available. It's this excitement and groundswell for Arduino/rPi/XBee/ZigBee that's sweeping me along. Other technologies look good but I don't want to swim upstream, which we very well might be doing by adopting CAN as he did. I'm very reluctant to stretch wires, but extremely excited to add cloud management, monitoring, and control. In any case, we can definitely learn from everyone's experience - I'll look more closely at his solution.

Thanks!

Ya, I noticed that too...

He seems to be up on gethub though:
https://github.com/RecreationalVehicle?tab=activity

/Joe

***patticake*** · 05-23-2013, 22:57

There is/was a guy in Fla., that was a NASA engineer that "upgraded" his dash to digital. Now that was a site to see. I haven't heard of or seen him in several years. Don't know if he still has his coach or not. He had every system covered. It was beautiful.

nedb · 05-30-2013, 07:48

(05-23-2013 11:21)konehd Wrote: .

http://roadwarrior.free-man.com/can/
/Joe

Hey Joe--

Nice link, thank you! Who knew the RVIA had a spec for an information system? RV-C, probably old news to everyone but me?

I like some of their sensor targets, like generator output freq. It isn't necessarily something I would watch closely (more like ocassionally), but logging/reviewing it periodically would suit my interest in it.

Monitoring AC/DC voltage and current is the main driver behind my interest in David's sanduino mesh net idea. The most problematic systems of my coach are voltage sensitive; it would be only right to sense and log them.

Free-Man put some helpful hardware tech in these pages for voltage/current measurement. Not being an engineer myself, it seems like Hall effects have an ever-expanding horizon of usefulness. I thought they were for bicycle speedometers Rolleyes

--Ned

davidbrady · 05-30-2013, 11:17

Hey Ned, Great to hear from you! I need my Arduino pal to help guide me along here! Smile

I'm thinking that the application that might garner the most interest might be remote bus monitoring. I know I sure could use something like this since my bus is now stored 100 miles away. Other's should find this useful if they travel with pets. The age old issue of having a buttoned up RV experience shore power failure w/o a genny auto start, or an unreliable genny auto start is one that many pet owners understand. I seem to recall that the Westhaver Gencon boards (auto genny start) in our LXi's has features that were included specifically to satisfy worried pet owners.

So, remote monitoring and possibly control of the generator might be a nifty feature, along with monitoring of inside temperatures and air conditioner status. I'd like to upload this stuff to the cloud (modern speak for internet) and provide a server for folks to browse their bus state.

All the small bit pieces are there to do this. The big question is what connectivity channel is available and is it economical. A quick google search reveals that the major carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc) aren't interested in the M2M market. M2M is short for machine to machine. Lucky for us there is a major and growing demand for M2M so specialized carriers have stepped forward to fill the gap economically. Long haul truckers are fueling the demand, and the service providers have developed packages for just a few dollars a month that allow a limited number of kilobytes of usage, which fits our needs almost exactly.

I'm awaiting my second shipment from Sparkfun and then we'll get busy!

nedb · 05-30-2013, 20:06

Love the coach "Call for help" concept.

I figure we ought to get a rep point when we order XBee radios. Otherwise, I'm just going to order a couple of 'em today. We'll reel this one in, I can feel it. Wink

--Ned

(05-30-2013 11:17)davidmbrady Wrote: Hey Ned, Great to hear from you! I need my Arduino pal to help guide me along here!

I'm thinking that the application that might garner the most interest might be remote bus monitoring. I know I sure could use something like this since my bus is now stored 100 miles away. Other's should find this useful if they travel with pets. The age old issue of having a buttoned up RV experience shore power failure w/o a genny auto start, or an unreliable genny auto start is one that many pet owners understand. I seem to recall that the Westhaver Gencon boards (auto genny start) in our LXi's has features that were included specifically to satisfy worried pet owners.

So, remote monitoring and possibly control of the generator might be a nifty feature, along with monitoring of inside temperatures and air conditioner status. I'd like to upload this stuff to the cloud (modern speak for internet) and provide a server for folks to browse their bus state.

All the small bit pieces are there to do this. The big question is what connectivity channel is available and is it economical. A quick google search reveals that the major carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc) aren't interested in the M2M market. M2M is short for machine to machine. Lucky for us there is a major and growing demand for M2M so specialized carriers have stepped forward to fill the gap economically. Long haul truckers are fueling the demand, and the service providers have developed packages for just a few dollars a month that allow a limited number of kilobytes of usage, which fits our needs almost exactly.

I'm awaiting my second shipment from Sparkfun and then we'll get busy!

davidbrady · 05-31-2013, 09:56

(05-30-2013 20:06)nedb Wrote: Love the coach "Call for help" concept.

I figure we ought to get a rep point when we order XBee radios. Otherwise, I'm just going to order a couple of 'em today. We'll reel this one in, I can feel it.

--Ned

We can definitely work on that Ned - it'd be especially useful to get a break on the gateway. We'll need a WAN and/or a cellular gateway (CDMA or GSM) of sorts and right now that seems to be where the money is. The data plan is cheap and can be purchased on a month by month basis.

For folks interested, google the "internet of things" or "web of things". Imagine dropping your coach off for a prolonged service period. Imagine sitting in your chair at home and browsing the condition of the bus's batteries, or whether it's plugged in, or whether the genny is running, or if the doors are locked. Endless possibilities!