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Temperature logging

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schmart

Hello,

I want to log temperature und humidity values with the jeenodes. My setup consists of four jee-nodes (two v2 and two v4) and a jeelink v2. The jeenodes are equipped with a room-board. Each room board uses only the sht11 sensor for measuring. All nodes are running the rooms.pde sketch from svn. The jeelink runs the rf12-demo sketch. I use a nslu2 to read out the serial stream. I have written a small mono application to read out the values and write it to the console.

Here is a small excerpt from the logfile:

01/07/2010 12:10:56 Station 2 Temperatur 18.4 Feuchte 44
01/07/2010 12:11:10 Station 1 Temperatur 16.4 Feuchte 50
01/07/2010 12:11:15 Station 2 Temperatur 18.4 Feuchte 44
01/07/2010 12:11:16 Station 4 Temperatur 16.8 Feuchte 44
01/07/2010 12:11:18 Station 3 Temperatur 15.9 Feuchte 51
01/07/2010 12:11:29 Station 1 Temperatur 16.4 Feuchte 50
01/07/2010 12:11:39 Station 2 Temperatur 18.5 Feuchte 44
01/07/2010 12:11:58 Station 2 Temperatur 18.5 Feuchte 44
01/07/2010 12:12:06 Station 1 Temperatur 16.4 Feuchte 50

The temperature logging is running for a while. But after a few hours, one node after the other stops working. After a few hours all nodes stopped working and needed to be reset.

My question: Is anybody here using a setup like mine and has the same problems? How can i debug this? Is it possible that the power saving cannot awake the node?

Martin

Posted 07/01/2010 11:22:49
jcw

Yes, this may be the power saving logic - I've seen the same happen on some (but not all) of the nodes here. I'll be investigating this in the coming days, to figure out a solution.

See also - http://talk.jeelabs.net/topic/104

Posted 07/01/2010 15:21:09
jreitz

I should mention that I am also having significant instability with the rooms sketch. In most cases, the node goes offline within an hour.

I haven't had a chance to look into it yet but the power saving logic seems like the most likely culprit although I am using the less common DS18B20 and EPIR configuration. I had to do some hacking to get the DS working so it's possible that I broke something. I'll look into it tonight.

Posted 13/01/2010 00:31:14

tor

I had a similiar problem with the rooms sketch - and mine was solved by adding the following line to the sketch :

static byte periodicSleep (word msecs) {

    // switch to idle mode while waiting for the next event

-

- Lines deleted

-
//            Serial.println("ready for sleeptimer.poll");

            delay(100);

    return sleepTimer.poll(msecs);

}
i.e. anything that generated a small delay before the return statement solved the stability problem for me - and it now runs completely stable for me - and I'm just running an DS18B20 from the board. The delay was randomly chosen, and may very well be way too long.
I have yet to do any serious testing (as you can see I had to add a large number of debug functions to fins this problem) - but I am so far really impressed with the code and the hardware.

Posted 13/01/2010 15:40:08

jcw

I've reverted the Rooms sketch to use the ATmega watchdog instead of the RF12. It seems to fix the problem of room nodes hanging after a few hours with constant 7.5 mA current draw. The new code has a slightly higher power consumption (can probably be tweaked further), but it seems to be stable - I'll leave it running here for a bit longer before declaring victory.

New code is now at http://code.jeelabs.org/viewvc/svn/jeelabs/trunk/rooms/

Posted 17/01/2010 15:45:50
schmart

I updated my four room nodes a week ago. All nodes are running fine and still sending data. Thank you!

Btw. I am using an "emergency mobile phone charger" (http://www.conrad.de/ce/de/product/763044/NOTFALL-HANDY-LADER) as power supply. It runs from a single AA-cell. I dont know how long this unit will run. I will report.

Posted 31/01/2010 07:23:18
bmj

Hello schmart

I'm also interested in using the rf12-demo sketch to receive (and not the JeeLink sketch for JeeMon). But my temperature readings are buggy. I think I'm still misinterpreting some bits of the serial stream as its coveted from the payload struct in rooms, then put out as dec numbers by rf12-demo then converted back by my code etc. I'm therefor very interested in your moono code that dose exactly what i want! I would be most gratefulle if you helped me by posting the part of your code that preforms the parsing of the output from rf12-demo her or sent it by mail to bmjbmj@telia.com.

WR/ B Mathias Johansson

Posted 01/02/2010 10:15:50
zooer

Hey,

would it be possible to share these codes and other info in JeeWiki?

I'd be very interested in learning what you guys do with the data once it's in your PC (or in the serial port). How you actually get that data into a database, and what then... for instance.

Cheers, Zooer

Posted 01/02/2010 11:14:47
rubi

Hi

I also own an NSLU2, but havent played with it since a long time.
Very interesting idea to connect it to a jee nodes.

How do you convert and display the serial stream?
Unfortunatly I have absolute zero linux experience.

Cheers
Rubi

Posted 01/02/2010 13:38:38

schmart

Its not very complicated. I used some c# coding I found at arduino.cc and adapted it so it can read the serial stream from the rf12demo sketch.

I have neither a ldr nor a motion sensor connected to my room nodes. So it is maybe a little bit too simplified in my coding.

Here is the central method which will read out the string from the serial stream.

[code]

        private void handleMessage(String aLine)

        {

            String aDataString = aLine.Substring(3);

            // Console.WriteLine("Detected "+ aDataString);

            String;

            float temp;

            int hum, station;

            if (aColl.Length > 5)

            {

                temp = (float)(int.Parse(aColl5 + (int.Parse(aColl[6])  256)) / 10;

                hum = int.Parse(aColl4 / 2;

                station = int.Parse(aColl1;

            }

            else

            {

                temp = (float)(int.Parse(aColl3 + (int.Parse(aColl[4])  256)) / 10;

                hum = int.Parse(aColl2 / 2;

                station = int.Parse(aColl0 & 31;

            }

            DateTime mNow = DateTime.Now;

            Console.WriteLine(mNow.ToString() + " Station " + station.ToString() + " Temperatur " + temp.ToString() + "  Feuchte " + hum.ToString());
            StoreInDatabase(station, 1, temp, mNow, station  10 + 1);

            StoreInDatabase(station, 2, (float)hum, mNow, station  10 + 2);
            UpdateWatchDog(station, mNow);

        }
[/code]

Posted 01/02/2010 18:21:31

amvv

Hello,

I have just put in the wiki my listener for the JeeLink, written in C. It is at:
receiverinc/>
It dumps the received data to a text file. It can be configured, but requires some work...

It also decodes the messages, and puts the data in a MySQL database.

It includes an error handler to stop it when you hit Ctrl+C and not hang the serial port leaving the JeeNode incommunicable.

It uses 9600 Baud, as I didn't manage to get it running with 57600 - probably a flags problem...9600 is enough for me and most uses anyway...

I adapted the JeeNode RF12 demo to only output the messages that are OK, but I think this code should also just process those...(not sure though)

use the following command to compile it:

gcc -o weatherlistener -DWITHMYSQL $(mysqlconfig --cflags) weather.c $(mysqlconfig --libs)

remove the -DWITHMYSQL if you don't have a (configured) MySQL database.

If you have any questions, just drop a line.

PS: sorry Zooer, I had promised you a long time ago to explain you this, but I had forgotten. I still don't do much with the data, but I will put in the wiki once I do.

Another note, in the code you can find details of my second JeeNode use, a data logger for, in this case, garbage, of which I will put pictures and a description online soon!
(edited by jcw to fix the broken URL)

Posted 01/02/2010 18:57:22
bmj

Thanx both of you!

Posted 03/02/2010 21:45:13
rdnzl

I'm kinda stuck, I have written a sketch to read 3 DS1820 temp sensors from my heating system on the 1-wire bus using this library:
#include <OneWire.h>
#include <DallasTemperature.h>
...
float tempC = sensors.getTempC(deviceAddress);
...

It's prints the temps nicely
CVNODE Temp C: 19.12 Temp C: 19.56 Temp C: 19.44 0

But how can I send those floats using the rf wakeuptosend() routine
rf12easySend(ptr, len);
How to split the float into chars/bytes?

Regards,
Ron.

Posted 09/02/2010 18:21:32
jcw

Perhaps something like this:

struct { float a, b, c; } payload;
payload.a = 1.23;
payload.b = 4.56;
payload c = 7.89;
rf12easySend(&payload, sizeof payload);

IOW, put them into a data structure, then send that data structure as raw bytes. Or you could send them as ints (say temp 100), which might be simpler on the receiving end to reconstruct, if you're using the RF12demo output on a PC.

Posted 09/02/2010 18:36:12
epokh
Speaking of which! I have a very basilar question. If the jeenode send this:
struct {
```
    byte light;     // light sensor
    byte moved :1;  // motion detector
    byte humi  :7;  // humidity
    int temp   :10; // temperature
    byte lobat :1;  // supply voltage dropped under 3.1V
} payload;
```
we have in the payload 8+1+7+10+1=27 bits does the radio pad to multiply of bytes?
Because the receiver than should unpack the say 32 bits (4 bytes) and do the reverse job to reconstruct the payload. Sorry for the noob question.
Right now I'm using multiple of byte payloads and using a java rxtx client or pythong to unpack and update a webserver.
Posted 06/05/2010 09:03:12
jcw

The padding happens in C.

Posted 06/05/2010 09:37:01
epokh

Oky donky.

Posted 06/05/2010 11:33:30
jeroen

The link: http://wiki.jeelabs.net/p/88 does not work. I'loved to see the code example. (i have problems with my serial connection (drops after few hours/days) Don't know if it is the jeelink with the central sketch or the Unix sw)

Posted 03/06/2010 16:25:21
jcw

Thx - this got lost in translation as I changed wiki's a while back. I've resurrected the page at receiverinc/>

Posted 03/06/2010 22:23:54
mountaindude
Nice work amvv.
Question though: Looking at your code, you do a test to see if E is in the received buffer:
```
                if (bufjj
```
Looking at the incoming data from the JeeLink, I never see any Es though, so this is not part of the RF12 library's protocol I take it, but rather part of the payload you send from your JeeNode.. Or I am missing something? Any chance of having a look at the JeeNode code?
Many thanks, G
Posted 30/09/2010 22:42:41
amvv

Yes, the JeeLink, in my version, always sends an 'E' at the end of the messages, and I use that to decipher that the message has finished. This has to do with the way the way the C code reads the serial port or how the data is sent...I never investigated... I will try to put the JeeLink code in here one of these days...but it is just the standard receiver code, only I only write to the serial port valid messages - that start with OK - and I put the 'E' at the end. By the way, my weather station has been running of 3 AA cells for 10 months now, sending a packet every 10 minutes, without any hiccups.

Posted 01/10/2010 07:41:27
mountaindude

Ah ok, thanks for clarifying that, for a while there I thought the late hour of last night's hacking played tricks with my brain..
Nice to hear about the batteries, pretty impressive. One of those days I'd like to try harvesting power for a device like this. I have a JeeNode right next to the house's mains fuse box, should be plenty of electromagnetic energy there to harvest... Might be possible, might not, haven't really looked into it. But the JeeNode doesn't seem to have any trouble sending packets over radio, in spite of the pretty harsh EM environment.

Posted 01/10/2010 19:25:49