[TriEmbed] Long range digital communication (long range wifi, XBee?)

Thu Oct 25 14:56:15 CDT 2018

Charles,

I am working on a project for a CA client who wants to use LoRa.  It is not able to send video but is very energy efficient and has range that could easily cover a golf course from a single gateway at the clubhouse.

Depending on where you are, you may also be able to use a LoRaWAN service which has a service provider, I am using MachineQ from Comcast.

It uses the same Low Power Labs RMS69W radios at 915MHz.  Hope this helps.

Chip

Chip McClelland
chip at mcclellands.org
(919) 624-5562
On Oct 25, 2018, 3:43 PM -0400, triembed-request at triembed.org, wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: Coffee roaster (Shane Trent)
> 2. Long range digital communication (long range wifi, XBee?)
> (Charles West)
> 3. Re: Long range digital communication (long range wifi, XBee?)
> (Glen Smith)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 14:32:25 -0400
> From: Shane Trent <shanedtrent at gmail.com>
> To: TriEmbed Discussion <triembed at triembed.org>
> Subject: Re: [TriEmbed] Coffee roaster
> Message-ID:
> <CAAFjd3raX35XcbvJtf8uVF6aYrircZsAuVpUtHhHX4KQzu+BVg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Craig,
>
> A hot air roast should take much less than 30 minutes. It was cool this
> morning and I roasted two batches, both to medium City Roast (just past the
> end of the first crack), and each was less than 6 minutes. I am using a
> vintage unit but have had similar performance from other devices. It sounds
> like your old air-popper may have had a temperature limit that kept it from
> getting hot enough. I did have one popper model that I had to hack into and
> bypass the low-temperature thermostat (but it still seemed to roast slow
> and did not last as long a unmodified units). In an air popper the roast
> should happen so quickly that it is easy to keep an eye on it.
>
> I put some notes about my current roasting/cooling setup into a blog post.
> My controls over the roaster are adjusting the recirculation of heat to
> increase the temperature of the air going into the popper and controlling
> the ventilation with a bilge blower. I think the photos show most of the
> details. I hope it makes sense. Ping me if you have any questions.
>
> http://fettricks.blogspot.com/2018/10/roasting-coffee-with-hot-air-poppcorn.html
>
> Shane
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 7:53 PM Craig Cook via TriEmbed <
> triembed at triembed.org> wrote:
>
> > I have been using this
> > https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XK3ALS0/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
> > for the last 8 years roasting green beans.
> >
> > That has the side vents, takes ~30 mins to roast. Works *really* well. I
> > burned the motor out 2 weeks ago. It's discontinued. Thought I should
> > migrate to an arduino based version, hence my questions and asking for
> > advice on what parts I should purchase.
> >
> > Yes, after the roast I dump the beans into a cooling basket.
> >
> > I have one of these to replace it:
> > https://www.gopresto.com/product/presto-poplite-hot-air-corn-popper-04820
> > https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006IUWA/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
> >
> > Given that new information, would it change the proposed design?
> >
> > It will be much better if I can control the roasting process though.
> > Without control I get a few over roasted beans.
> >
> > Thanks for everyone's help.
> >
> > Craig
> > _______________________________________________
> > Triangle, NC Embedded Computing mailing list
> >
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> >
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 15:23:22 -0400
> From: Charles West <crwest at ncsu.edu>
> To: TriEmbed <triembed at triembed.org>
> Subject: [TriEmbed] Long range digital communication (long range wifi,
> XBee?)
> Message-ID:
> <CAGojqSkE6PJ8tj5cL6YY=ppJxDt=WYamKJ9CdG-1gi9Qga0HGg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Hello!
>
> I'm in Lansdale, PA now but I was hoping I might be able to pick you guy's
> brains. My current big project is trying to build one or more robots to
> deliver food/drinks on golf courses. I'm currently trying to figure out
> the best way to maintain continuous(ish) contact between a access
> point/basestation at it's base of operations and 1 or more robots operating
> on the course.
>
> At a minimum, I would like to have the robot report its basic status
> (battery percent, GPS position) but it would also be great if it could
> stream video when required to allow teleprescence steering or determination
> of what is going on. The robot would probably be about 1 km from the base
> station at max.
>
> I'm currently considering 3 possible solutions but I'm pretty open to ideas:
>
> 1. Use a mobile hotspot/cell modem:
> For fixed $130 and monthly $20, I can get a mobile hotspot which
> provides one gig of data per month and more data for $5/gig. If I keep the
> reporting really light, this could work but the communication would have to
> be kept pretty limited.
>
> 2. XBee:
> These modules seem to float somewhere between $25 and $60 in
> prices, so a pair would be somewhere in the $50 to $120 range. Sparkfun
> had a good guide to XBee (https://www.sparkfun.com/pages/xbee_guide) but
> they are listing almost all of their products as retired (besides old
> series 1) and most of the stuff I read about XBee is from 2015-2016 so I am
> not sure what the best options are anymore. In any case, it looks like it
> would provide a low baud rate connection over the desired range. The main
> problem is that it requires working through XBee and making my basestation
> have to have special software to forward information. I'm also not sure
> about security and it is certainly not going to be streaming video.
>
> 3. Long range Wifi:
> Rodney's done some work in this area before with his weather
> balloon projects. I don't recall off the top of my head how far he managed
> to get but I do remember he had to use higher power than allowed without a
> higher grade amateur radio license. That power level would not work for a
> commercial operation. There are some companies that are selling solutions
> aimed at farms (http://ayrstone.com/www/?v=7516fd43adaa) and there seem to
> be off the shelf solutions that can get 500 ft (mostly aimed at hotels).
> The hotel systems seem to be in the $350 range and the farm systems in the
> $500 or so. The robot could use a high gain antenna, but it is not clear
> how much it helps. These systems have security built in and potentially
> can stream video if the range is long enough. Like hotspots, writing
> software for them would also be easy.
>
> What do you guys think?
>
> Thanks,
> Charlie
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 14:43:31 -0500
> From: Glen Smith <mrglenasmith at gmail.com>
> To: Charles West <crwest at ncsu.edu>
> Cc: TriEmbed <triembed at triembed.org>
> Subject: Re: [TriEmbed] Long range digital communication (long range
> wifi, XBee?)
> Message-ID:
> <CANwtiDV803kUwF2HeFvODfM54s1Bytey0MB3G497okKije-coQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Charles,
>
> I played around with Moteinos https://lowpowerlab.com/guide/moteino/ for a
> while and had good luck with the RFM69 radios, I don't remember what
> frequency I was using.
>
> I just recently was listening to an episode
> <https://theamphour.com/398-an-interview-with-felix-rusu/> of The Amp Hour
> where Chris interviewed the guy who makes these - he is getting very good
> range depending on all the usual variables. It might be worth checking them
> out.
>
> Glen
>
> On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 3:23 PM Charles West via TriEmbed <
> triembed at triembed.org> wrote:
>
> > Hello!
> >
> > I'm in Lansdale, PA now but I was hoping I might be able to pick you guy's
> > brains. My current big project is trying to build one or more robots to
> > deliver food/drinks on golf courses. I'm currently trying to figure out
> > the best way to maintain continuous(ish) contact between a access
> > point/basestation at it's base of operations and 1 or more robots operating
> > on the course.
> >
> > At a minimum, I would like to have the robot report its basic status
> > (battery percent, GPS position) but it would also be great if it could
> > stream video when required to allow teleprescence steering or determination
> > of what is going on. The robot would probably be about 1 km from the base
> > station at max.
> >
> > I'm currently considering 3 possible solutions but I'm pretty open to
> > ideas:
> >
> > 1. Use a mobile hotspot/cell modem:
> > For fixed $130 and monthly $20, I can get a mobile hotspot which
> > provides one gig of data per month and more data for $5/gig. If I keep the
> > reporting really light, this could work but the communication would have to
> > be kept pretty limited.
> >
> > 2. XBee:
> > These modules seem to float somewhere between $25 and $60 in
> > prices, so a pair would be somewhere in the $50 to $120 range. Sparkfun
> > had a good guide to XBee (https://www.sparkfun.com/pages/xbee_guide) but
> > they are listing almost all of their products as retired (besides old
> > series 1) and most of the stuff I read about XBee is from 2015-2016 so I am
> > not sure what the best options are anymore. In any case, it looks like it
> > would provide a low baud rate connection over the desired range. The main
> > problem is that it requires working through XBee and making my basestation
> > have to have special software to forward information. I'm also not sure
> > about security and it is certainly not going to be streaming video.
> >
> > 3. Long range Wifi:
> > Rodney's done some work in this area before with his weather
> > balloon projects. I don't recall off the top of my head how far he managed
> > to get but I do remember he had to use higher power than allowed without a
> > higher grade amateur radio license. That power level would not work for a
> > commercial operation. There are some companies that are selling solutions
> > aimed at farms (http://ayrstone.com/www/?v=7516fd43adaa) and there seem
> > to be off the shelf solutions that can get 500 ft (mostly aimed at
> > hotels). The hotel systems seem to be in the $350 range and the farm
> > systems in the $500 or so. The robot could use a high gain antenna, but it
> > is not clear how much it helps. These systems have security built in and
> > potentially can stream video if the range is long enough. Like hotspots,
> > writing software for them would also be easy.
> >
> > What do you guys think?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Charlie
> > _______________________________________________
> > Triangle, NC Embedded Computing mailing list
> >
> > To post message: TriEmbed at triembed.org
> > List info: http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org
> > TriEmbed web site: http://TriEmbed.org
> > To unsubscribe, click link and send a blank message: mailto:
> > unsubscribe-TriEmbed at bitser.net?subject=unsubscribe
> >
> >
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