Which product should I use?

Projects Programming
1

Hello all,
I am a student involved in an engineering design project to help Goodwill Industries. We are trying to create a wireless light box that can be mounted on a weed whacker. The goal is to notify a worker that they need to turn off their weed whacker to speak with the supervisor. We wanted to use a cell phone app to trigger the lights on the box flashing. I've looked into the Arduino technology and am pretty sure it's what I want to use. Any ideas on which product would work best for this project? It will be protected within the box so durability is not much of an issue.
If you have any questions about the project specifics, please ask.
Thank you!
Celia

2

I'd like to be able to help but I haven't a clue what you are on about. Could you rephrase the question so it's more suitable for an international audience?

3

I can try. My question may not make sense due to my lack of knowledge about arduino technology.
I am wondering which board I should use to light up LEDs from a distance using a cell phone application.
Is that more clear?

4

Arduino Uno and GSM/GPRS shield. Search for the latter, lots of examples.

5

Thank you! Although, I am not sure that our client would be willing to purchase a plan for the SIM cards. We were thinking of using a bluetooth connection based off an article we found about someone linking an arduino board to a bluetooth adapter.

6

Depends on distance. Bluetooth was designed to connect personal items together so has a limited range, personal experience when streaming music to bluetooth headphones in the house is about 10-15 feet.

7

The range would be a maximum of around 30 feet.

8

And it depends on what the thing is that you plan to mount it on. Does it create electrical interference? I presume there is some sort of motor on it?

9

That is true. It's got a gas powered motor that will be about 4ft away from the device. I'll let my group know about your suggestion as an alternative :slight_smile: Thank you for your help!

10

dannable:
I'd like to be able to help but I haven't a clue what you are on about. Could you rephrase the question so it's more suitable for an international audience?

Goodwill Industries = Charitable outfit that distributes donated items to the less fortunate.
weed whacker = gardening tool, you may know it as a string trimmer. Motor, shaft, rotating string that chops weeds down.

11

Thank you lar3ry. I'd suspected the first part, the second left me - well, we have an amusement game called Whack-a-mole...

12

Hey,

I was thinking about your problem, and there are a couple things you could do.

  1. arduino uno with WiFi. You will want to wire to the kill switch, people won't see flashing LEDs on bright sunny days and because the motor is behind you when you are using it, they may not see it. You could put it near the blade end.
    So in the truck I would put a 12volt WiFi router (Linksys) that is powered off the car battery. Also setup a web server of some sort. Could be on a arduino also.
    So each of the weedwackers arduinos will tell the webserver of their status. And using a smartphone you could access the webserver and control anyone of the weedwackers.
    You could monitor things like temperature. Lenthgh of time they have been running. And kill the power. Or even prevent them from starting.

It wouldn't even take that much code.

Jasit