1-Wire Weather-Station/Cam

Thanks to the community from this newcomer... I've toyed with things embedded for the last 10 years... but this was my first tinker w/ the Kirkwood platform.

With what you all supplied, and some compiling of custom packages, I've got this up and running:

davysweather.dyndns.org

This works several orders of magnitude better than it did on a router-with-Optware.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2011 09:42PM by davygravy.

Looks nice! BTW, I have an Asus WL-500GpV2 too. Compared to what you can get from Debian armel repos, Optware is pretty lame. They don't even have logcheck there :(

Hi Davygravy. Could you post some images of your hardware? I'm too interested in build a indoor weather station based on pogo, like yours...

But I have not knowledge about 1-wire stuff...

Thanks

pazos, I got my 1-wire stuff from 3 sources, mainly

1. http://www.hobby-boards.com/catalog/main_page.php - this company provides PCB's ... and a few cables... I bought all the components through Mouser Electronics and Digikey . The boards that I bought are : 6channel hub, humidity sensor, barometer (not yet built). I also bought a cable that converts RJ11 to RJ25.

2. Maxim-IC.com http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/1-wire/ makes a wide assortment of some of the most used sensors ... and if you click on the Samples link, left frame this page, you will see how to get a few of each of the basic sensors. (for FREE !!! :) ) They don't give out samples of the expensive/sophisticated sensors, from what I've seen.

3A. eBay has cheap tempurature sensors... ( like 10 for $10 or so...)

3B. eBay has devices similar to this : http://www.maxim-ic.com/datasheet/index.mvp/id/3834 (see the USB - to - 1-Wire adapter , which links the sensors to the USB on my Pogodebian ) ... I haven't used the near-look-alikes that are available on eBay, but I may try one in a month or two.


I will post pictures of the housing/pagoda and the hardware box, once everything is finished/final.

How are your soldering skills? I thought mine were good, but the 1-wire 6channel hub was challenging for me. In retrospect, I would now _just buy_ the hub. The sensor boards were not difficult, I found.

=================

Also, once I have the scripts in a more finished form, I will post them, the tweaks to a few packages, and my crontab settings.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2011 09:25PM by davygravy.

Hello Davygravy,
Very interesting, your 1-Wire Weather-Station/Cam, would appreciate a note when pictures of housing/pagoda are posted.
Thanks

@ Terri & Pazos ... I've had to drop back a few steps and fix some stability issues ... wifi dropouts & /tmp filling up to quickly...

need to tweak a few scripts in the next day or two, but will post those pictures of the pagoda, housing, etc, once I get it all physically settled.

I am end up going from a USB flash drive to something more like a 2.5 in SATA attached by USB adapter...

OK, its looking just a bit more mature now...

in the "Technical" section, there is the beginning of a writeup... a lot of details to be fleshed out and described... but the basics are all there, along with the sources of hardware for the 1-wire stuff...

=====================================================

• davy's Github Repo's rescue-dg

DavyGravy,
Yours is the application that got me to buy a pogoplug. :-) Now I'm not so sure. It seems that there are subtle differences between what I need to do and what you have done.

I posted my issues in the wrong forum, http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?4,7295 but the essence is that I won't have a network to attach to when my station is installed. The pogo will have to make direct internet connections. It does this fine with the original pogoplug firmware. When I try to boot from USB with either debian or Arch, dhcp fails to acquire a lease. (Both boot fine.)

Anyone have any ideas as to why?

TJ
http://wxtofly.home.comcast.net
K7TJO

No idea, really. Do other devices on your network get a DHCP IP address as expected?

=====================================================

• davy's Github Repo's rescue-dg

The pogoplug can get the internet stand alone with it's original software.
I have 4 lines total and all machines can get out.

For some reason though, the setup on the debian installation doesn't. I've tried all the tweaks to various parts of dchpcd that I could think of.

If I had a debian compiled version of udhcpc, as used by the embedded system, it would probably work. It is clear that there is something I don't understand about dhcp.


TJ
http://wxtofly.home.comcast.net
K7TJO

In your discussions about building the weather station, you mentioned that optware with the router was not good enough. I have gotten optware under CELinux to run everything I've tried, which includes motion.

Is the problem that there is no video driver for the CElinux kernel?
TJ

Well, the previous routers were Asus WL520 and RT-N16... I wanted (_needed_ or really just liked) TomatoUSB, and I couldn't get a good webcam to work nicely...

I realize that I might have tried OpenWRT... but I really liked the greater umphhhh that Kirkwood supplies.

=====================================================

• davy's Github Repo's rescue-dg

After much more linux than I ever expected to learn, I have two working pogoplugs thanks to a serial cable. Thanks to all who had helpful information on how to do this. Unfortunately, it is still the case that when the units boot from a flash drive, they fail to connect to the internet if not behind a router.

I need them to be able to stand on their own bouncy pedestal without other routers or computers holding their wires. I am planning to deploy the unit as a weather cam in a location that has no direct internet, but will require a phone connection every 5 minutes or so to send the next picture to another server. If it can't get the internet on its own, then it is useless to me.

I have noticed how simplified the original pogoplugv2 linux environment was compared to a debian, arch, fedora, or freebsd setup. What I would like to do is get a kernel with matching modules that allows a system as simple or nearly as simple as the Cloud Engines shipped system. The kernel that Jeff provided as a flash to mtd1 substitute, http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?4,3896,3896#msg-3896 unfortunately has the same "won't attach to the internet" issues that the full systems on the stick have.

The other path that I have tried that has not worked has been compiling the modules I need for webcams for the existing kernel. I've tried both native and cross compiling, but the resulting *.ko files are not compatible with the running kernel.

Does anyone know which compile options might make this a problem?

Does anyone have a setup where the plug is not behind a local router and relies directly on a remote isp for its connectivity? It seems that some part of the problem is the fact that I use comcast and that they have some sort of MAC address authentication. Why would the kernel make the Mac address reporting different?

Any clues would be much appreciated. I'd hate to give up after all the fun I've had that has now become a bit tedious...

Thanks TJ