Hey everyone, I'm new to the Arduino (what a great idea and platform) and wanted to pass something by you.
I would like to create a system of 5 units, 4 small battery powered units each with an X, Y,Z accelerometer, connected to larger single unit (battery powered also), wirelessly. I would like to transfer the data from each accelerometer and read it out on the single unit in perhaps a good graphic form for comparison or if that's not possible, maybe a minimum of 12 bar leds (X/Y/Z x 4). Bells and whistles may be overly optimistic, but maybe not.
Each of the four accelerometers would be placed and clamped to a piece of equipment (or a car possibly) to read and compare vibrations.
Assuming the whole thing might fly, what kind of sample rate might we expect to transfer and display and would it be bluetooth or wifi? And, can all of these units be connected at once? Feel free to speculate. I'm not working on a product for sale, just want to see if it is feasible and might be a future project I'd like to try.
I use MQTT for all of my data exchanges between 8266 nodes, but regardless of how you connect them, how are you going to synchronize them? (I assume that the data must be synchronized since you don't describe your project).
That is a good question. There should be a time base. If the units were networked into a base with 4 nodes all on the first layer and each sending data directly to the base, how much delay would (could) there be in taking a measurement and sending it to the base for each node. Each node could have a clock and send 4 values: time, X, Y and Z acceleration. Then plot the data as time vs acceleration graphically pretty much the same way it would be shown on an oscilloscope.
It's ok if there's a delay between taking the acceleration measurements and displaying them as long as it is displayed correctly.
The key question is what would be the bottleneck reducing the number of data points per
second?
I read a lot of posts but haven't found anyone doing something similar yet.
A handheld, battery powered base unit with a display showing 12 traces as on a chart plotter or an oscilloscope as time vs. acceleration.
Four separate battery powered, wireless units connected as nodes each with an X/Y/Z accelerometer. Each accelerometer is mounted rigidly to a clamp and connected to it's unit by a short cable. Those units are mounted close by on a part more stable to keep from shaking the majority of the electronics.
Each node is recording time vs X/Y/Z acceleration and communicating it wirelessly to the base. Each node is read in sequence node 1 to node 4 and then repeated in a loop.
The project has 4 units gathering vibration data and passing it to a base unit displaying a chart plot of time vs. acceleration with 12 traces for comparison of vibrations.