Weather Station and IoT Kits?

[carlosviansi]

The Humidity and Temperature Sensor  and  Ambient Light Sensor  is the board having the sensor solder on the bottom side. You just need to connect the I2c cable to the Multi I2C Bus POT  or WiFi Remote I2C  and you can direct access the sensor information through the I2c bus. Since the I2c cable is included with 5V supply, the sensor board do not need any extra power supply.

As for the WiFi Remote I2C , you can make use of the PineA64 as your "sensor router". When the WiFi Remote I2c is power on, it will automatically connect to the wifi network and after that connect to the PineA64. There will be a small server program in the PineA64 that handle all the incoming connection from the WiFi Remote I2C.

As for your weather station application, your application will connect to the Server Program in the PineA64 through Tcp connection. You can either write the program and put it in the PineA64 or put it on the separate pc. 

With this type of topology, Each Pine64 will be come the "router" of a sensor cluster and your weather station application can connect to multiple Pine64 to monitor multiple cluster. The sensor cluster can even located remotely since all the connection between the weather station program and small sever program in Pine64, are base on Tcp networking. 


../KHGoh

@@khgoh

I went over this in my research lab for net-zero buildings and there are still some questions. Please bear with me :-) I am trying to be our advocate to the group and have some pines running there instead of only rhasberry pis. 

Q1) I think I am clear on the Multi I2C Bus Pot. I attach it on top of the Pine, then go crazy with the cables and the sensors, and since everything is directly connected to it anyway, it makes sense the data is readily available. If my pine A64 has a Bluetooth/Wifi-Internet module, I can just code it to say, upload to a remote database with a cron. Is this correct?

Questions 2, 3 and 4 are about the Wifi Remote module. Question 5 and 6 is about both Multi I2C Pot and the Wi-fi Remote.

Q2) My best intuition on why I would want to buy the WiFi remote is to go cable free from my PineA64. Say, if I want to spread sensors all over a room and don't want them wired through the walls, ceiling or ground then I would go after it. Is this correct? 

Q3) From the photo:



and from the Wiki: 

DC Jack socket (suitable for 4.0mm X 1.7mm DC Jack) for system power input

Did I get it right that the Wi-fi remote is a standalone piece and does not require to be plugged to the PineA64? In such a way, I can have then several of those remotes scattered throughout the room close to their sensors, and have my Pine (do I require it having the Wifi-Internet/Bluetooth module in this case?) talk with each one Wi-fi remote? Do we have this Dc Jacket Socket as an add-on? I don't seem to find it.

Q4) What is the range? It should be in the pdfs but TBH given my lack of knowledge I find a bit hard to dig in still. How much can we go if we attach an external antenna? 

Q5) This question concern the timestamp applied to the sensor readings. Can the wi-fi remote module apply timestamps? Or it is it only applied when read by the PineA64? If that is the case, then how inaccurate the wi-fi remote can get on the timestamps delay? And if that is also the case, does that mean the Multi I2C POT is a better option for timestamp accuracy than remotes? If so, by how many seconds, mili seconds, etc?

Q6) How many gigabytes of RAM do you recommend for the Pine to be a weather station pushing in data to a online database server by itself? Would 1 GB Ram suffice or do I need to go 2GB? Also what OS is best here? It sounded like Remix OS would eat more RAM memory than the Arch Linux. Up to how many sensors / POTS / Remotes could the Pine manage for the 1GB and 2GB RAM?

Thanks!