Hi everyone,
We are designing a telemetry system for an electrical car. We are planning to use Arduino since we have a lot of experience on it. Basically, our system will take the data from sensor that connected to the engine, battery and other parts of the car. We are facing with problems about the range of the RF modules. The race track will be circular that is about 2 km. In addition to that there will be probably some obstacles around it. Base station will be in the middle of the track. So we need to deliver the data from the car to base station for maximum 500 meters in a half-obstacle area (trees, advertising sign boards). We decided to use XBee 868 LP with 2.1 dB gain dipole antenna for the base station. For the car, we couldn't decide about that. Because it will be on the move, we don't know how this affects the antenna. What are your suggestions?
I want to repeat our requirements:
- Wireless Communication in a half-obstacle area for maximum 500 meters
- Battery is not a big problem, we will be using the battery of the car
- XBee is just one option, the others are okay for us, just suggest us
- Since we are in Europe 868 MHz modules will be better for us
- The delivering data will be an data structure that consists 20-30 different data (not so much, e.g. double temperature values from 16 sensors)
Thanks a lot. If you need detail, I would be really happy to answer.
As you are talking racing circuits so guessing F1 data for Lewis Hamilton. As a software guy and so would not assume 100% coverage around the whole circuit because of obstacles. You could install more than 1 receiving stations to cover the dead spots. Another solution would be to store the data, just for the odd second or two the car is in a blind spot, and then send the held data in a burst before going back to real time readings. Suggest using the Arduino(s) for data collection then pass it along to something with a bit more grunt to handle data handshaking with the base station, perhaps using something like Rabbit Message Queue.
kevgrim:
As you are talking racing circuits so guessing F1 data for Lewis Hamilton. As a software guy and so would not assume 100% coverage around the whole circuit because of obstacles. You could install more than 1 receiving stations to cover the dead spots. Another solution would be to store the data, just for the odd second or two the car is in a blind spot, and then send the held data in a burst before going back to real time readings. Suggest using the Arduino(s) for data collection then pass it along to something with a bit more grunt to handle data handshaking with the base station, perhaps using something like Rabbit Message Queue.
Thanks a lot for your answer firstly, but the thing is that we are preparing for a competition and they will not let us to know the race track before the competition day. They just announced the details of the track nothing more. Thus, we will not be able to install receiving stations to cover the blind spot. If we were able to do it, it was the solution for us to overcome this coverage problem and it would be really nice. The second thing that they want from us to do is to show the data on the screen that is going to be chosen by them. If we cant show the data even for a second, they will probably break our point and we will get a low score. Thanks again for your interest. 
OK, so clearly you are simply not in the league for this project.
They need to get someone who is equipped for the job. It will only be heartbreak for you.
Paul__B:
OK, so clearly you are simply not in the league for this project.
They need to get someone who is equipped for the job. It will only be heartbreak for you.
Yes, that's an option to consider. Beside that, what is your suggestion for our system? You look like someone who is equipped for the job according to the your comment. Don't you want to help us?