I'm trying to get my head around using an Arduino for my Bachelor's Thesis project (called Mémoire in Belgium).
I've NEVER done anything with an microcontroller, so I'm a tiny bit nervous on splurging my hard earned student cash...
I'm not looking for someone to do this for me, I'm looking for help at avoiding the NOOB pitfalls.
This summer, I've decided to start to learn basic programming for the Arduino and build a basic setup.
I need to datalog quite a few things, the method is not the objective, so I can use off the shelf stuff.
My ultimate target will be to log once every second 4 analogue sources (pressure gauges, temp, humidity) and one digital (wind speed) 24/7 for 3 months.
Open source is better, because I am meant to pay for this (can't use that old copy of Excel they gave me at work in 2003) and provide a detailed BOM.
For this test I'll just be logging 1 analogue and 1 digital source. keeping stupid simple.
I've been reading stuff on Arduino.cc and going over tutorials...
... and for the initiated, it's slightly confusing.
To run this test, this is my simplified BOM:
1) Arduino board
2) USB SD card shield.
3) My sensors.
4) Small OEM 5V power supply
5) Real time controller?
6) Open office Calc.
To be able to replace anything in a few hours, in case of a major magic smoke moment, I'll be sourcing locally (and I can't put "some dude in China on Ebay" in my BOM).
I have a shop here in Gent (home) and a couple in Antwerp (Antwerp), so I can get stuff in the time it takes me to get there Monday to Saturday.
1) For the board my choices are limited to; Leonardo, UNO rev3, NANO (328) and M0.
I quite like the Nano due to it's form factor and 8 analogue inputs (I can have redundant sensors).
But none of these have an SD card reader...
2) The only SD shield I can get easily here is a Wireless SD shield...
I obviously won't be using the wireless:
http://www.gotron.be/media/files/Downloads/A000065.pdfOr would this Adafruid SD breakout board be compatible?
http://www.gotron.be/en/bouwkits/adafruit/adashield/micro-sd-card-breakout-board.html3) Sensors: for the test I'll just wire a photo-resistor (anaogue) and a 555 timer circuit with another photo-resistor (digital; quantity of 1 and 0's, per unit of time, go up and down during the day), just crap to generate a signal.
4) 5V, 1A, plug style mains power supply.
5) An RTC: do I need this to get the Arduino to save data at regular intervals?
6) Open Office CALC is a simple spreadsheet, I'll have to write a script to transform the raw data into usable figures.
When I fooled around with GPS data, I would do this with a TCX file. It seems it's not that complicated to get an Arduino to do something similar:
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/DataloggerThe trick seems to open and close file each time. I'll have to code a bit to get it to open a new file every day, so if there is random corruption, I'll only lose a day of data.
I'll be retrieving the data via the USB port once a day.
Another option would be ditch most of this and use an Adafruit Datalogger:
http://www.gotron.be/en/bouwkits/adafruit/adashield/adafruit-assembled-data-logging-shield-for-arduino.htmlFeel free to comment, even if you think I'm doing it all wrong and should use Raspberry Pi instead (my only other realistic option)...