I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice on a network project I want to start.
I want to create a network between standalone devices, in different households, that all have a sensor (for now a motion sensor) and actuator (LED) and are able to communicate together. So to keep it “simple”; Lets say I trigger motion in my house, a signal needs to be send to the other devices in the other households. In the other ones the LED will start blinking (e.g. for an hour) and vice versa. So each device needs to be able to act as a sender and receiver.
I have quite some experience working with Arduino, but almost none with networks. Therefore I would like to ask you some advice before I spend too much money or work inefficient on this project.
First, I guess multiple Arduino YUNs will do the job for each household right? So a standalone device (no computer), Internet access via Wifi (through home router).
Furthermore I guess that data should be processed further. But again, I need to expand my knowledge about networks. Could you guys give me some advise how to approach this project. Maybe by diving into YunClient tutorials? YunServer tuts? Temboo or Spacebrew?
I see communication as the main issue which you will need to resolve. Since you say the two end points are in different households I assume you don't already have a local area network that they both share, so your main options would be to communicate via the public internet or using mobile data. If you go via the public internet then at least one of the devices will need to be in a network which you have configured to permit incoming connections from the general internet. In principle this is easy to do but exactly how you do it would depend on what networking equipment you have installed and would require some basic understanding of how TCP/IP networks work, so you'd need to do some research of your own to learn how to do that with your equipment.
Once you have got communication sorted out then nothing else you describe seems at all difficult.
You can do this pretty easily with Temboo by sending data from one Yun to some online service e.g., Google Spreadsheet, Twitter, Dropbox, and then reading the data back from there on the other Yun. This avoids having to learn too much about networking and is pretty simple to get started with. Temboo has a bunch of examples to get you started at Arduino: Connect your Arduino to the cloud with Temboo.
I work at Temboo, so feel free to get in touch with any questions as you're getting started.
Thank you both for this valuable and quick response! I already read something about Temboo, but was not quite sure if it would fit this project. I will try some examples to familiarize myself with this environment. If you have some specific tutorials available, I would like to hear from you, otherwise, again thanks for the advice!