What is this project
The aim of this project is to assess the possibilities and the performance of the nRF24 in terms of sending and receiving data from a range of sensors over a mesh network that maybe useful in an agricultural setting.
The nRF24 network allows the sensor data to be sent to a base for analysis, in this case, the sensor data is sent to a web page on the thinkspeak web site for display. See the links on the main project page.
This wiki describes the various setups in the use of the nRF24 module for both the Arduino and The Raspberry Pi.This project is based on the library's and examples at tmrh20. see http://tmrh20.github.io
The audience for this wiki is aimed at the intermediate to advance designer as there is quite a bit of assumed knowledge of hardware, networks and web design. It doesn't provide intricate descritptions of the setups but aims to have enough information to successfully replicate this system.
This documentation is specific to these projects at this repository and is complimentary to the documentation found on the tmrh20 site. Some of the documentation on the tmrh20 site appears here and is presented as a convenience for the reader.
The project is created exclusively for the use of sensors connected to a RF24 network so that the data is transmitted back to a base which is then processed.
The sensors presented here are analogue in nature which allows a generic approach. Serial type sensors is possible however each of these sensors require a specific approach to the code and is beyond the scope of this project. This approach also helps to isolate the methods so as to focus on the target goal of the system.
As mentioned, he system is specific in nature apart from the analogue sensors although the connections described are the same.
The RPi is used as a "base station" for the arduino micros which processes the sensor data. The sensor data is produced by the Arduino for the selected sensor. The RPi and the Arduino are networked wirelessly together via the nRF24 radio module. The networking software used is described in the following descriptions but is basically an ethernet TCIP connection that requires OSI layers which is made up from the libraries described below.
The RPi also connects to the internet to transport the data to a web server which it can then be displayed from anywhere using your web browser. To achieve the connections, the RPi runs the gateway software and a node script which retives data and then posts it to the web.
