Hy everyone, How cool is it to wright my own topic as a first activity on udoo. I am completely new to any kind of electronics but i am an mechanical and bussines engineer so not afraid of technical challenges. Living in the Netherlands creates vast challenges as for watermanagent when building underground. For a job i control and manage the technical installations during building. When we pump water out the ground in order to build we need to monitor the waterlevels. This where i am searching for new possibilities in order to serve projectdevelopment. So my question is the following, can i use a setup with the udoo as the heart to monitor waterlevels with in-house (allready present) sensors, up to distances of 80 meters across building sites, collecting the data over longer periods of time, and also being able to view a live stream via a browser? If this is possible for around 250 euros and done and developed by me it would be possible for me to differentiate myself from other suppliers. Also in a hobby perspective it would be great to be able to make something out of electronics and code. I am exited learning this world of coding and hoping to find a backing is this community. For now, have a great day, greets Mark
Mark, Presenting the data through simple browser pages should be possible. If you use the Ubuntu 12.04 OS, I think you can install something like the Apache webserver and PHP software on the UDOO. Similar tools may be available in the other OS builds. Unless the water levels are changing very rapidly indeed (i.e. significant changes in less than about 5 seconds), you could simply write code into the web page that the UDOO server which causes the browser to refresh it every few seconds. This is likely to be easier than streaming the data. I think the more critical challenge will be interfacing the water level sensors to the UDOO. How much do you know about the sensors? The key things to find out are: What type of output do they generate (e.g.: discrete, variable voltage, 4-20mA, fieldbus, etc)? This will help in working out what additional circuitry you may need to interface them to the UDOO, and what offsets and scaling factors you may need to include in the monitoring system. What voltage and power do they need to operate? This will enable you to work out what additional power supplies your level monitor may need to provide to power the sensors. A couple of other things you mention are likely to influence the design: Depending on the the type of output from the sensor, the signals it generates may degrade over distance, so the distances of up to 80 metres will need to be accommodated in the design. For example, if the sensor produces a variable voltage, a proportion of that voltage will be dropped due to resistance in the cabling between sensor and monitor, so the further apart they are, the lower the reading the monitor will see compared to what the sensor outputs. Longer cable runs also tend to be more susceptible to electromagnetic interference from electric motors etc. These issues can be overcome, but you may need to design in some calibration and filtering capability, either into the hardware or software, or both. If this is to be used on building sites, you also need to ensure that the monitor will adequately protect itself and any people in the area should the cables between it and the sensors be cut or damaged by someone accidentally drilling or sawing through them or cutting them with an excavator or something. Again, these are not difficult problems to solve provided they are considered early in the design process. Hope this gives you some pointers on how to proceed. Simon
wow, thank you for the great and complete answer! as for the first step would be to contact the supplier about the technical information of the sensors. (what I know now is that we read it with a small box and we get a reading in 4 digits about the pressure that is measured. the sensors are suspended in a tube underground and measure the amount of "wheight". how excactly is to be found out.) secondly would be to determine if this is anyhow possible and duplicable. (how much sensors can it work with and how stable can it be made etc.) then it would be about buying an Udoo and starting with setting it up. as for the money factor, how much would it cost to set it up, without regarding sensors and wiring of the sensors? and also, how much time would it take me to make a first try? greets Mark.
