Weather Station and IoT Kits?

[khgoh]

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!

Refer to your question Q1, you can do it either by using wifi or making use of the ethernet RJ45 connector, should be no problem.

Q2, yes, you are correct. The Wifi Remote I2c will poll the data from the sensor upon request from the  back end Server that is running on the PineA64 and the linkage between the Wifi Remote I2c and PineA64 is base on Wifi connectivities (through wifi Access Point).

Q3, yes, it is a standalone unit. An DC Power adapter will be included in the package. You can connect as many WiFI Remote I2c as you want and all of it will communicate with the PineA64. The PineA64 will become the router for your sensor network cluster.

Q4, The transmission power of the unit is about 20dbm, which is the same as the wifi transmission power of your notebook. The module we use is model ESP-07 with ESP8266 chip on it. This module has a on board Chip antenna on it and also a UFL connector that allow you to connect to an external antenna. Some people from the net have test out the range of this chip. Please check out is Wifi Range video and you might  have a better understand on the wifi range of this module.

Q5, The Wifi Remote I2c do not have time stamp on it. Anyway, the Wifi Remote I2c  will not have any I2c polling/reading/writing action unless command is send by the Server in the PineA64. Once the Wifi Remote I2c has finish with the request from the server, it will immediately return back the result to the server. It will not store any result in the Wifi Remote i2c module.

Q6, If you only running the Pine64 with the Wifi Remote I2C Server with linux but without any GUI, 1GB ram should be more then enough. But you are running it with GUI, it is better to use the 2GB Ram model.

Hopefully i have answer your question.

../KH Goh