My situation, what I am attempting to do is remotely monitor my wellhouse pump, and storage tank. I want to monitor my well pumps current draw, monitor water level in well, monitor level switches in a storage tank and report data to my home wifi system. Eventially I would like to control my pump for filling of storage tank.
I will be using a Zigbee net with series 2 xbees.
So far for the coordinator I have an arduino, xbee shield with series 2 xbee, a sd/datalogger shield, and a wifi shield from sparkfun. For the router end device I have an arduino uno, a sensor proto-shield, a emontx shield w/current transformer, and a xbee series 2 and shield. My problem is the coding, I understand most of the fundamentals but binding it all together is the question. After my router arduino reads the sensors, of which there will be 3 analog sensors and three digital sensors, I need help in determining the method of getting this data into the xbee and ready for transmit. Do I use an array to hold this data? Do I use this remote arduino to convert the analog data before it goes into the array or do I convert at the coordinator? I will probably be using API mode for serial transmission. There are so many sites that are doing similar tasks but are confusing to me which way to go. For the present I am just trying to figure out the router end of the network. Any help, ideas suggestions would really be great....Dennis
I think I would try using a wireless router in the well house in the bridging mode to connect to a wireless router in the house for the wireless part. Might be a lot simpler (and cheaper).
It is good to plan ahead, and keep the ultimate goal in mind... but you need to break the project down into bits which can be assembled in a cumulative manner. Especially to get useful help from formums.
You speak of a data logger. Is what HAS happened, or what is HAPPENING most important?
Do you intend to have a display of the current situation in the house? Is that why you have two Arduinos in the proposal? Maybe start with an old (inexpensive!) laptop a the "receiving" end, for the display in the house? Dream of replacing it with an Arduino in due course, by all means, but get the "sending" Arduino working first?
Is your well-house so very far from the main (people) house? Why not bury a wired link, and use TPC/IP (fairly easy to set up webserver in well-house), and skip the hassles (and Ways To Go Wrong) of the WiFi link? Or use some serial cable link?
Maybe START with something to monitor the heat in your hot water tank, assuming that's in the people-house. Get THAT working, and you will have learned a lot of things which will serve you well when you attack the more complex project of monitoring the well-house.
Not exactly what you are trying to do... but full of elements relating to it...
(For your application, you can forget about all the stuff about making the Arduserver "visible" across the whole internet, and just use a static IP address (as you would if making visible), and access the Arduserver using that, e.g. 192.168.0.250:81, instead of adding the extra hassles of being able to access it with something like....
I like it (especially for the tank).