Has anyone worked with BLE applications where there is no smartphone (or app) involved with very little ability for computing power? I am formulating something around asset tracking where the use of a smartphone would not be possible and minimal computing power would exist. Is it possible?
Interesting concept. But could you be more descriptive on what exactly are you trying to implement in terms of computing power?
I suppose you could try my opinions below, (Apologies for anyone who disagrees, feel free to add things here)
--> Without a smart phone can be done, if the BLE module can write some serial data to a wifi module on the same board. So you will simply program the wifi module with your wifi name and password so it can transmit logs from ble to the web and with that you could use https://thingspeak.com/ or similar IoT cloud based services to analyze your raw data to a meaningful graphical version.
--> Little ability for computing power?, Well if you want to bypass all the UI that does the processing for your raw data, the programming part will be quite complex. There are several ways to handle data BLE data, if the BLE is capable of acting as a Central and Peripheral role at the same time, you could possibly create a network of BLE modules talking to each other and use the raw data to suit your application needs.
Hope this helps.
P.s I have tried both the above methods as part of testing and they both work.
Related
To make an autonomous drone and help it fly from one place to another without any human intervention, I plan to send data using two ESP32s and receive those data using my PC. I won't use the onboard navigation system inside the drone. I need suggestions regarding the signal-receiving unit (using wifi i will send the data), which will feed information directly to my PC. Kindly give me information on the best way to receive signals from ESP32 to PC, in the shortest amount of time and with a reasonable budget.
We were thinking about NodeMCU, but we aren't going to use it. Moreover, I am in the initial phase and have just started researching this. Also, I am pretty new to this, so any suggestions will help me to discover and also help me get what I want.
Firstly, this may be a stupid question or one that has been asked before but I am not quite sure how to google it.
I try to learn a bit about using modbus to communicate over serial interfaces and I have trouble understanding the mechanic of getting your signal on the wire/connection. I do unterstand how protocols (e.g. Modbus) encode and decode their Data. I'm interested in the process of getting your bitcode through the interface (preferably rs232) to the other machine.
In other words: How can I write a piece of code myself (no libraries etc. I want to learn how to do it) where I can input a couple of binary numbers and maybe the baudrate so that another device with a working modbus driver can receive it via direct cable connection.
If the matter is too complicated for an answer here, I'd be happy to get a link to some resources to teach myself as well. Or even some help for the right search terms.
I am a beginner in Zigbee. I wanna create a mesh network of Zigbee modules in which all nodes can communicate with each other.
I found that Zigbee can be operated in different modes and each modes have its own features. I want to know that which mode will provide an effortless communication in real time applications. We want to build a system that automatically connects to the neighboring Zigbee modules and establishing a communication path to each other.
Is anyone knows about it,please give me the answer to clarify my doubts.
You can use both
Transparent mode has limited functionality and not suitable for larger networks but
API mode allows you to form larger networks and is more appropriate for creating sensor networks to perform tasks such as collecting data from multiple locations, controlling devices remotely, automating your home or for real time systems.
I have been playing with Contiki for some time now and have tried out various examples and wrote my own for both the simulation environment and the real hardware. I have only been experimenting with self contained networks that, for example, measure the temperature difference between two nodes and then communicate that data with other devices (PCs) over plain text RS232 link, blink LEDs, and such simple stuff.
Now I want to make a more complicated system where instead of just forwarding the data in plain text to be read on a console I would forward it to an application that would in turn post it to some sort of web service and, vice versa, receive data from web service to be delivered to nodes on the network. There is quite a lot of examples and tutorials describing this kind of setup but all of them (as far as I am aware) are focusing on the IP(v6) stack and SLIP to achieve this. The problem with this is that I have a really lousy programmer and uploading of a 50 kB image takes about 1.5 mins so the development cycle is pure hell. I am also out of luck with simulation since my platform is not really supported at the moment.
That's why I decided to try out the Rime stack, image size is 1/3 of the IPv6 and the development cycle is somewhat acceptable now (I really should get a decent JTAG programmer...) Meanwhile, I am having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around this new setup with a different network stack on which there is very little information around. Although it is pretty easy to understand by itself, I am not sure how I would go about connecting a Rime network to an IP network and if it was even possible or advised/intended by it's designers.
I have some ideas in my head, ranging from ad hoc communication over a serial link between a server application running on the PC and the collector node, to a real Rime border router that is certainly outside of my league, for now.
How would you go about it? It would certainly work for my simple experimental case to just have a collector node that gathers the data from the Rime network and sends the aggregated data over a serial connection to the custom application that does the rest of the magic, but, I wouldn't want to be the guy that reinvented the wheel and I am quite sure that Rime wasn't designed to be used in a vacuum so there must be at least an advised way of doing this?
Rime is a really simple stack (By simple I mean few functionnality). But it's quite quicker for simple task.
You need to program the Rime stack on your gateway. Thus, your board and the gateway can communicate with the same stack. So now you have the data send on your gateway. The gateway now can send the data with IP to whoever you want.
If you want more technical detail, then edit your question with more specific technical context.
Btw JTAG is a must have. (for industrial application)
Edit : An other solution is to simply send your data from your board to your gateway in broadcast. Then the gateway take the data and interpret it. The cons of this method is you have to somehow be sure that your gateway interpret only the data of your board (not of others board)
I would like to be able to communicated with PLC controllers, so that I can send and receive custom commands on the PLC.
My idea of being able to do this was to have a TCP listener on the PLC that could read TCP incoming packets on a specific port, and execute routines based on the commands in the packets. It could also send information back via TCP/IP.
This would allow me to write software in multiple languages such as C#, PHP, JavaScript, etc. so that software can be used on any platform such as Windows, iOS, Android, etc. to issue commands to the PLC. This would also mean you do not need the PLC software (which can be costly) to view or control the PLC.
I am not a PLC programmer, so I do not know if PLC has the capability of sending and receive custom TCP packets. I would like to know that a) if it is possible b) how feasible it would be to do this and c) what exactly I should research so that I can accomplish this.
Thanks.
It sounds a bit like reinventing the wheel. You want to make something like KepServerEX?
http://www.kepware.com/kepserverex/
There are also two things to consider - one is the ability to interface with the PLC to share data (ie: for a custom HMI) and the other is to program the PLC. For the latter you still need the control software from the manufacturer unless you're willing to reverse engineer and re-write it from the ground up.
Keep in mind, also, that PLCs don't work the same way that other software does. There are no functions or procedures or classes or objects or even really any "commands", per se. A PLC is a system which executes a continuous fixed program of mostly raw logic rules and calculations. A typical interface to an HMI involves reading and writing directly to/from logic bits and word data (ie:hardware memory locations) which represent the current state of the machine. OPC already does this just fine so I'm not quite sure what you're going for.
If you're looking for a cheap/free alternative to a full commercial package, something here may work for you :
http://www.opcconnect.com/freesrv.php
If I understand correctly, when referred to "Run/Stop" you mean for the PLC to 'Start' or 'Stop' scanning the code and updating its I/O. If this is the situation, it would be perfectly suitable to add a Scan_If_On bit (which will be written by a TCP Command) in parallel connection with the "Start" bit controlled by the HMI.
This way, there will be 2 forms of "Starting" the process controlled by the PLC. HMI and TCP.