Tag Archives: wifly

WiFridge : the software

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Arduino’s code

It can be found here on github. I won’t post it here. I hope comment in the code are sufficient to understand what I did. I will just describe main principles here.

Reading sensors

I used those libraries :

  • For 1-Wire, PJRC library which can be found here.
  • For DHT temp & humidity sensor, Adafruit library which can be found here.

WiFly

The goal is to send sensors data to an emoncms web site so that it can be historized and graphed. For that matter I built 2 web emoncms websites :

  • one on the internet on a shared hosting
  • one on a small and cheap Raspberry Pi

I know of 2 libraries for this WiFly module :

  • the one based on sparkun Sparkfun WiFly shield which can be found here
  • another one called WiflyHQ which can be found here

I first tried Sparkun lib but I could not get a stable web connection. It would eventually failed to connect to the destination web server after a random period of time. So I had a try for WiflyHQ. In the end, I still have stability problems but I find it easier to use as it kind of replicates all RN-XV functions whereas Sparkfun one tends to “hide” the bits and bytes but making it a bit more cryptic to me.

Also, samples in WiflyHQ makes use of a software serial port by default  whereas Wireless shield is using the hardware serial from the Arduino which is getting complex as you can’t really use the serial port for debugging without a risk of disturbing the Wifly module (see Hardware post here.)

Because of WiFly connection instability (it may be my code though wich is not… optimal…), I tried to use watchdog library to reboot both wifly and arduino in case something went wrong by entering an infinite loop which will eventually restart the arduino.. Not that efficient though… I still have some case where everything is stuck, not sending any data, but not rebooting… Or the wifly wont just properly reboot.

So I used the leds the try to grab some diagnostics information… but it does not really helped. It seems that the wifly will not get out of command mode from time to time. No idea why…

What’s next

Because of this instability, I want to try the quite new CC3000 wifi shield from Adafruit ! Just received it. I will migrate my code to work with that promising shield 🙂

 

 

Introduction to one of my first Arduino based project : WiFridge…

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… or why one would want its fridge to be connected to the internet !

This is one of my first Arduino based project. I had some issue in the past with my freezer that would let the temperature going to high for too long and I had no way of knowing before it was too late. I could barely detect it happened by using an ice cube in a glass that would melt in case of a huge temperature problem. That is why I decided to build the WiFridge : a wifi device that would monitor my fridge’s and freezer’s temperatures and send an alert in case anything goes wrong.

I first tried using an Arduino Ethernet because it was far less expensive than an arduino with a wifi shield. But… I have no ethernet port near my fridge and I did not want to have an ethernet cable across my kitchen… So I had a look on internet and decided to go for a RN-XV WiFly Module from Roving Networks and the ad-hoc shield.

WiFridge 1000x750

For the temperature part, I bought 2 DS18B20 sensors, in a waterproof package, coming with a 1m long cable and its 4.7k pull-up resistor. I also bought an DHT22/AM2302 temperature and humidity sensor so I can get my kitchen’s environnement data along with fridge’s and freezer’s temperatures. Both sensors are digital sensor. That is, they send the temperature (and humidity for the AM2302) in the form of bits, not an analog voltage. DS18B20 sensor is using 1-wire protocol which I found very nice because I can connect both DS18B20 sensor to the very same input.

Add a few leds for monitoring the status of the gizmo, a bit of soldering after some testing on a breadboard, a few lines of code, and that’s it, I got my WiFridge up and running, sending data to the internet…

In a coming post, I will go into more details, give a detailed schematic for the hardware, describe Arduino’s code that I used (I am still working on it though as I have some Wifi stability problems…) and how I sent data to my emoncms web sites (one local on a Raspberry Pi and one on a shared hosting.)