hmjswt 9 Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 @zeke This is a very interesting project. Doe you have any idea witch sensors you are going to use an how the communication will be. Maybe Bluetooth or serial ( RS485 )? I have very good results using the Analog TMP36 in monitoring different places in our garden. For logging I use Bluetooth and a PC with local MicroChip 24LC1025 EEPROM backup. I use home made boards with a MSP430G2553IN20 Henk Siewert. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
zeke 693 Posted May 3, 2018 Author Share Posted May 3, 2018 @hmjswt I am presently making use of the ds18b20, ds28ae00, and max31851 sensors in my prototype system. Most IoT demonstration projects that I see online are using just a couple of sensors. I'm kind of sad about that because I intend on using a boatload of sensors. I am thinking that my dashboard will become very complex. So, I have to spend some time designing what the user interface could be and then research the readily available options. My instincts tell me that I will probably have to roll my own dashboard interface because of the massive quantity of data that could be shown to the user. I don't think that I can just display a single graph with a lot of traces on it. I have to come up with a 3D interface or similar abstraction. Maybe use colour as well as position to show the data? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Rei Vilo 695 Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 @zeke Do you need to display the temperature of all the 600+ sensors, or only those that have adnormal temperatures and / or trends? One flow can acquire the data and populate an SQL database, and another search for anomalies and display them. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
zeke 693 Posted May 4, 2018 Author Share Posted May 4, 2018 @Rei Vilo Good points! I had been imagining a transparent 3D image of a grain bin or silo that had vertical lines arranged inside of it. The vertical lines would have a number of data points along their lengths. Each data point would change its colour based on the sensor reading. When viewed as a whole, the sensors that are hot would trend towards the red colour and sensors that are normal would trend towards a green or other neutral colour. At a glance, the user would understand the relative temperatures inside the grain bin. I agree that viewing all of the sensor data at once would be foolish and overwhelming. I also agree that the data should flow into a database for safe keeping before being processed and passed into the User Interface. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
zeke 693 Posted May 5, 2018 Author Share Posted May 5, 2018 Additionally, I performed some tests in node-red. Using a python program, I published data to five MQTT temperature streams. I did this at a rate of five samples every 250ms, 500ms, and 1 second. It liked a 1 second update rate the most. I composed a node-red dashboard sketch that would display all five streams simultaneously using both a chart and a gauge for each stream. The dashboard displayed all the data successfully but there was a noticeable lag between publishing and displaying of the data. The lag has me thinking that chrome may be overloaded during this process. I had a lot of tabs open. I should note that I am doing all of these tests locally on my Ubuntu desktop machine and RAM isn't a problem. I might have to upgrade the spinning hard disk to an SSD though. Hmm... I just realized that we are talking about node-red more than DeviceHive in this thread. Does it matter to anyone? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Rei Vilo 695 Posted May 5, 2018 Share Posted May 5, 2018 Have a tried running Node-RED on a dedicated Raspberry Pi Wireless? At USD10, it is worth experimenting to get a precise idea of the lag. Does your application need to display all the thermometers, or only those with an issue? 7 hours ago, zeke said: Hmm... I just realized that we are talking about node-red more than DeviceHive in this thread. Does it matter to anyone? You may rename the thread on the first post zeke 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
zeke 693 Posted May 11, 2018 Author Share Posted May 11, 2018 Thank you Sir! Topic edited successfully. With regards to the temperature display, I still have to figure out that. Spontaneously, I imagine that I would display the average temperature of the entire grain container. If there were a hot spot then I would have to figure out how to indicate a problem to the user. The challenge is to figure out a paradigm that hides the complexity of the data initially but allows the User to dig deeper to reveal more detail. Kind of like the zooming function of a satellite map - you start out at 30,000 meters and zoom in. New data is presented as you zoom in. I think this is called Data Decimation. The best example I have found is the iOS application called Netatmo - a weather station app. When you look at the temperature graph over a month span, it presents the data with a few data points. As you pinch to zoom, more data points are included and the trending line is recomputed. I admire them for their engineering. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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