Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Jump to bottom

Tracker hardware & onboard software #4

Open
4 tasks
takluyver opened this issue Feb 12, 2018 · 30 comments
Open
4 tasks

Tracker hardware & onboard software #4

takluyver opened this issue Feb 12, 2018 · 30 comments

Comments

@takluyver
Copy link
Member

takluyver commented Feb 12, 2018 •
edited by smaria
Loading

There's some brief description of the tracker units, along with a couple of pictures, on the instructions page, but not enough detail to build one. It would be good to figure out:

Parts list

The pictures show four components:

  • The board
  • Battery
  • GPS antenna
  • GSM module: SIMCOM 5218 3G module

(Plus a SIM card and IIRC a micro-SD card, which are standard and readily available)

Software

Is there any custom software to run on the tracker units to send the data to the server? If so, is it already hiding somewhere in the repo, or does anyone have a copy of it? What's the procedure to build it and put it on the board?

cc @SylvainHunault @chinchifou @Sylyon
@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

I just realised that sounds like I'm planning to build all the trackers from scratch. I know we should be able to use the trackers from previous years again, but I want to make sure the necessary information is available if we need to build more. The collaborative challenge we're planning may require more trackers in use simultaneously than previous contests.

@chinchifou
Copy link

chinchifou commented Feb 13, 2018 via email

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

Thanks @chinchifou ! I think we will have access to the existing hardware, but we haven't got them yet. They were used for WRSC 2017, and we declined to take them to Southampton after the competition as we weren't sure that we'd be able to host it for 2018. We need to track down who has them now.

@SylvainHunault @olivierreynet could I get access to one of your private repositories with the tracker module code in?

Do you still want to keep the tracker code and documentation private, or would it be alright if I put it into this public repository once I get it? That would implicitly put it under the MIT license we agreed on for the server code.

@chinchifou
Copy link

chinchifou commented Feb 13, 2018 via email

@SylvainHunault
Copy link
Contributor

SylvainHunault commented Feb 13, 2018 via email

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

If you no longer need any of the contents to be private, you can make the repository public from the settings tab (in the 'Danger Zone' near the bottom of the page).

Otherwise, feel free to email me the files in question ([email protected]).

@Sylyon
Copy link

Sylyon commented Feb 15, 2018 via email

@SylvainHunault
Copy link
Contributor

SylvainHunault commented Feb 26, 2018 via email

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

Thanks Sylvain. Did you send that to one of my email addresses? Or to Bastien? I've been away for a few days, and I'm trying to sort through an email backlog now, so I don't want to miss your message.

@SylvainHunault
Copy link
Contributor

SylvainHunault commented Feb 28, 2018 via email

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

Aha, yes, this is all going through Github, which unfortunately doesn't handle email attachments. If you want to email me directly, you can use [email protected] .

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

Great, I've put the Lua script from Sylvain in a new trackers folder in the repo.

Now, does anyone know the details of the parts other than the GPS module? I assume the battery is a regular LiPo, but are there part numbers for the mainboard and the two antennae?

@SylvainHunault
Copy link
Contributor

SylvainHunault commented Apr 15, 2018 via email

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

Thanks Sylvain, that's useful info. I'll add it to the repo.

the board made by Benoit, Quentin & Bastien (and other sorry if I forgot someone)

Do you mean this is a custom PCB?

@SylvainHunault
Copy link
Contributor

SylvainHunault commented Apr 18, 2018 via email

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

That's impressive! :-)

Are there any design files from making the PCB? Would the designers be willing to share them? I'm trying to think about how we make it possible for someone to build more of these trackers if necessary.

@Nanoseb
Copy link
Member

Nanoseb commented May 11, 2018

Sorry if that's not the right place for that, but does any of you have an idea of the battery duration of the trackers? (from what I understood it was about 2h, can any of you confirm that figure?)

@tsaoyu
Copy link
Member

tsaoyu commented May 12, 2018

Currently, I have three official trackers from Aland team.
They was in a waterproofed Peli case and I believe they supposed to go with big boats.
Ping me if there is any tests need to done with that hardware.
Also some questions to you guys:

  • is the interchangeable with the new tracker? if not,
  • what kind of battery is required?
  • how to flash new software on the tracker?

@chinchifou
Copy link

chinchifou commented May 17, 2018 via email

@SylvainHunault
Copy link
Contributor

SylvainHunault commented May 25, 2018 via email

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

@tsaoyu We're not defining any 'new tracker' - the info I'm collecting is just to document the existing trackers. Or are you thinking of the difference between the big boat trackers and the ones for smaller boats? I had assumed that they were the same, give or take a bigger battery in the bigger ones. But I haven't actually checked that!

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

Benoit sent me a collection of technical information about the tracking system. I've added one HTML file into the repository with some notes about configuring the SIMCOM module. The rest is in PDFs and Office documents, which aren't so nice in git, so for now I've put them in Google Drive. The folder should be visible to anyone following that link.

This includes:

  • Various manuals for the SIMCOM 5218 mobile data modem
  • Connection diagrams and pin lists for the custom PCB
    • If anyone has files with the PCB layout, I'd be happy to add those too
  • Some notes on using the tracker module
  • A description of a presentation about the system given at one of the previous conferences (2015?)
  • Tables of which parts of the HTTP interface should be accessible to which people

I removed one purchase order (for the SIMCOMs) in case it had some private information on.

Thanks!

@tsaoyu
Copy link
Member

tsaoyu commented May 30, 2018

@SylvainHunault, @chinchifou, @Sylyon and @takluyver, thanks for sharing. @takluyver you are right, the tracker for the bigger boat has the same electronics as the smaller boat. The 'older version' in my head probably is the early generation of the board (with SD card slot and shown in this doc). Anyway, thanks all for providing information on the tracker.

@chinchifou
Copy link

chinchifou commented May 30, 2018 via email

@smaria
Copy link

smaria commented Jun 15, 2018

One point that would still be critical for making more: I can't spot the actual PCB layout in any of those files. Could someone point me in the right direction?

@chinchifou
Copy link

chinchifou commented Jun 15, 2018 via email

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

Thanks Benoit - what you sent is very useful. If there is a need to build more trackers, someone may be able to use the existing PCBs as a starting point for making a layout file.

This was referenced Jun 23, 2018
Open
Open
@smaria
Copy link

smaria commented Jun 23, 2018

Many thanks to everyone who has been collecting all this information so far. With 7 trackers available, but a good chance of more teams signing up, we either have to rely on some boats logging themselves for the area scanning challenge (imho quite reasonable), or make some more trackers.
So, to give a bit of an update: The remaining trackers and all spare parts going with them are on their way to Southampton. I have found someone to re-do the layout swiftly, however the first thing they pointed out was that the GSM module seems to be no longer available. This of course would make the re-doing of the PCB rather pointless. The manufacturer was contacted to inquire about follow-up models, but that does not look very likely. It seems that a key feature of the GSM module is that it handles the computational effort processing the GSM data, logging to SD card and sending it out via GSM. After a few hours of searching from various people, no suitable replacement has been found. Similarly no board that already integrates all of the modules (GSM, GPS, SD-card/other storage) has been found.

Even if we don't need the trackers for this year, finding a sustainable solution for this would be very good. As this is getting a fairly large issue, I am splitting this into three issues:

Any thoughts and contributions on this are most welcome.

@takluyver
Copy link
Member Author

Once the trackers arrive, it might be good to invite @kirs and do some testing of the website, including the live competition view.

@smaria
Copy link

smaria commented Jun 23, 2018

Good idea! If @tsaoyu is around, we can maybe give it a first look on Tuesday together, everything should be around by then. I have not looked into any of the set-up beyond the trackers yet, we probably first need to sort sim cards and do some set-up work with tabarly etc.
Maybe worth getting another second hand PC from isolutions to set everything up.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Assignees
No one assigned
Labels
None yet
Projects
None yet
Milestone
No milestone
Development

No branches or pull requests
7 participants
@takluyver @smaria @tsaoyu @chinchifou @Sylyon @SylvainHunault @Nanoseb