What do the Nodes Looks like
A lot like a Jeenode shoved in a box . Which makes life really simple, The jeenode is small, low powered, has lots of prebuilt code for interfacing, and is cheap. It also has a radio, which means I don’t have to drill through solid concrete walls(so often).
What are you sensing?
Heat mainly, sometimes power, sometimes light. Here’s a picture of a DS18B20 “One Wire” temperature sensor
What runs the Nodes?
Custom software, affixed here unpack the files into your arduino IDE sketchbook. It should compile and run like a charm. The software comes in three parts, the packet library, the sensor sketch. (The third part runs on the linux server.) Open up sensor.pde and have a look:
There are a three modes, decided by the MASTER const.
- 0, the node will sit there and print out all the traffic coming from the sensors.
- 1, low power temperature mode, sits there in sleep, periodically sends temperature and light reports.
- 2, polls the light sensor for power flashes, power hungry.
In the setup function you can set the node’s address (NODEID = 0x02;) which can be anything between 0-15. 0 is reserved for the listening “master” node, however you can have more than one node with the same address. Its just not the best idea.