Remote Data Acquisition Idea Needed

[Sobakava]

Hi guys.

I've to collect some measurement data from 200 different
stations. There are P2P leased-lines, phone-lines at
the remote points and at the center point. There is no
possibility to use another RF / optics etc. medium.

I plan to use only a microcontroller board for each station
and there will be a PC at the central.

I was thinking on embedded modems for u-controller boards but this will require a pbx at the central and may cause 'server busy' problems.
Probably "server" can connect to clients "once at a time" and scans every client in a given period to solve this problem.

What method do you recommend to use? Any other idea? TCP/IP, dial-up?

 

[eltonjohn]

Regarless of your comunication protocol ..
have you thougt of using a power modem ..i did something similar
and i used the power modem approach ..Also i don't know why you
discard RF.. This days is inexpensive,fast & realiable!

 

[dpechman]

im not the more indicated guy to talk about, but try to talk with your local celular company about gsm technology, its amazing for this kind of solution.

 

[7rots51]

If you have a cable (like as tel cable,both it is not used for tel) between each station and the central.you can use zarlink MT9172 and MT8920 to stablish a bidirectional link between center and each station and send power to station by cable(data and power on the same cable!!)

 

[Sobakava]

How is it possible to do using Internet? I know Ubicom has TCP/IP stack. Probably it is possible to implement emdedded web server or something like that? Will it be reliable?

Or,
If I use UDP protocol what do I need at cental office? A router or hub? I mean can I implement a network like LAN but over phone lines?

And,
Could you tell me more about power line communication? Is it available everywhere? How does the devices find each other etc...

Regards

 

[cintus]

I have equinox superserial hubs and pci boards, with them you can control remote serial ports (inputs & outputs) via tcp/ip in a local or remote lan. For example, you can attach up to 128 serial devices in a plant, lab or warehouse to one bus slot in your server. If you want more information about equinox products go to www.equinox.com. I distribute this products in Spain. There are also fiber optic solution with other brands, but they are very expensive. My web is www.aplinet.net , you can find there information in spanish, I have to update it in english.

 

[artem]

There are some solution done with gsm modules .
If amount of data is quite small that can be fit into
160 characters (max SMS length for one message )
and report frequency is not to high (let say 1 per day ). If message length is bigger , you can use SMS message segmentation . (Some systems like car positioon tracking uses this method ).
you can use GSM modem SMS approach .
If you need to transfer much more bigger data you can try to use GPRS and connect to sserver through internet (it is not necessary if you can reach deal with your cellular company to use private connection from CGSN node ).
Also, there could be solution for RF based telemetry systems .

 

[H_u_n_t_e_r]

Hi Cintus what about price for serial port over ip soulutions pls PM me.