Jump to content

Welcome to Smart Home Forum by FIBARO

Dear Guest,

 

as you can notice parts of Smart Home Forum by FIBARO is not available for you. You have to register in order to view all content and post in our community. Don't worry! Registration is a simple free process that requires minimal information for you to sign up. Become a part of of Smart Home Forum by FIBARO by creating an account.

 

As a member you can:

  •     Start new topics and reply to others
  •     Follow topics and users to get email updates
  •     Get your own profile page and make new friends
  •     Send personal messages
  •     ... and learn a lot about our system!

 

Regards,

Smart Home Forum by FIBARO Team


Sea water temperature


knuth

Recommended Posts

Here is a challenge: I previously had a Davis weather station (now defunct) with a rather neat feature. About 200 m from the house, without a direct line-of-sight, I installed a temperature probe to measure sea water temperature. This was connected to a transmitter, which communicated with the central unit through a solar powered link in a tree half-way. This enabled me to read the sea water temperature on my weather station (to see if it was attractive to go swimming!)

 

I am now in the process of installing a Fibaro system in the house. It would be nice to reinstall the same feature on the HC2. I see two possible paths forward:

a) Similar to the old solution, by using a z-wave temperature sensor by the water, some sort of repeater half way, and pick up the signal on the HC2.

or

b) Connect the temperature sensor to some sort of mobile internet connection (narrow band, preferably, as I will not need broadband for this), transfer the data to a "cloud", and the somehow download these values to the HC2 over the internet connection. 

 

For a), any suggestions on equipment and vendors that could do the job will be welcome. As for b), my main question will be how Fibaro HC2 can include externally downloaded data in its display. 

Or maybe you can come up with a better solution? An option c) or d)...?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For option B, I believe you can use VD to pull data from 'cloud'. You will likely need to be able to program to create VD for that. You may check out how HC2 is able to pull data from Parrot Power Flower API or Netatmo Weather Station (both are data on 'cloud').

 

I am interested in this topic as I have been thinking of a use-case: sea-water fish farms to introduce automation or semi-automation to help the farmers improve productivity and/or better yields.

Edited by chaicka
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Topic Author
  • Interesting, chaicka. Let's see if anybody comes up with other suggestions.

     

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    One issue you have is distance. If you are interested in a geeky diy solution, try LoRa technology. Theoretically, for such a low bandwith reach should be about 2000m.

     

    I have ordered a few LoRa modems, just for fun, I'll receive them in a few weeks

     

     

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

  • Topic Author
  • Sounds interesting. LoRaWan is new to me. Keep us posted on your experience, as you start testing your modems. In my case, I assume that I would need a LoRa-compatible(?) temperature sensor unit and a LoRa modem, and then pick up this LoRa unit on my regular WiFi. Is that how it would work? That would be a version of my alternative a), presumably without the repeater.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • 2 years later...
  • Topic Author
  • Since posting this question two years ago, we have actually installed a solution based on option b). The sensor and telemetry solution is described here:

     

    Please login or register to see this link.

     

    To get access to these values in the HC2, we use the enclosed scene which periodically downloads the temperature and assigns it to a label in a virtual device. This VD displays all kinds of weather related data. Some private details are withheld in the enclosed LUA file, shown by the phrase <insert ...>

     

    All credits for this solution, both HW and SW, to my son Erik.

    Please login or register to see this attachment.

    • Thanks 1
    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    32 minutes ago, SmartHomeEddy said:

    Did you use LoraWan for the option b?

    No, as mentioned briefly in the linked Github repo, I went with an Arduino with integrated LTE modem.

     

    So, the data travels: (sensor) - cable - (Arduino) - LTE 4G - internet - (RestDB.io), from where it is retrieved by the HC2 through intermittent polling of its REST API. 

     

    It's a bit of a round-trip, but the data is also displayed on a website so I needed it available outside HC2 on a reliable backend. 

     

    (I'm the son @knuth mentioned)

    • Like 1
    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Join the conversation

    You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

    Guest
    Reply to this topic...

    ×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

      Only 75 emoji are allowed.

    ×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

    ×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

    ×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

    ×
    ×
    • Create New...