Data acquisition - Let's take a look...

Finally I'm ready to show acquired data on the web.

I developed a small PHP web application which shows data and charts through the browser.

Some details:

- PHP 5 programming language and HTML5 rendering
- MARIADB database engine (the independent version of MYSQL, bought by Oracle)
- Frontend developed with Bootstrap v.3 framework
- Google Charts library for charts
- jQuery e jQuery-UI Javascript libraries

The User Interface is very simple; it aims to let me verify that all the systems are running fine.

I developed a simple homepage which shows a couple of charts for:

- daily photovoltaic production (link)
- last minutes of Methane Gas detection with a link to a page which shows daily data (link)

Dal grafico della produzione fotovoltaica si può notare un dato anomale...nelle ore notturne la produzione sembra essere costante e maggiore di 0 (cosa naturalmente impossibile...). A detta dell'assistenza, questo problema sembra essere dovuto alla potenza reattiva dovuta alla scarica dei condensatori dell'inverter
From the first chart you can see a strange thing...during the night it seems that photovoltaic production is positive...(impossible, isn't it?). It is due to the reactive power caused by capacitors in the inverter.

(today was a good day...we got 2Kwp)

Under every chart you can also see the last detected data.

On this page there is an auto refresh function which lets you see the real time data.

Then I also developed a login page for future functionalities.

This web application is running on the Raspberry PI, where Apache 2 is installed.

I used a Dynamic DNS service to let this web application be on internet, through a NAT managed by my home router.

I used NO-IP service, which gives me 3 free domains. There is also a linux client application which keeps DNS updated every time my public IP will change.

My first project - data acquisition system

I started design my first data-acquisition system with Raspberry PI and Arduino. The idea is to have a sensors network which send data to a receiver which, through ethernet, send these data to WEB/APP server.

The main components are:

- one or more sensors
- a receiver
- a DB Server for storage purpouse
- a WEB/APP server to acquire data and let remote user monitoring the system

Here is the design:



More details:

SENSORS

They can send data in different ways:

- wireless RF-433 towards receiver
- ethernet towards receiver
- USB directly towards server

They can be Arduino board or Raspberry PI or others...
Depending on the type of communication, there can be other interface boards or control led...

RECEIVER

It receives data via wireless RF-433 or via Ethernet
Through ethernet, it transmits data to WEB/APP server, for storage and monitoring purpose

It's built over an Arduino boards with Ethernet Shield and wireless RF-433 receiver. There are also control led.

WEB/APP SERVER

It receives data from receiver through ethernet or from sensor directly connected on its USB port
It stores data on DB server
It runs a web application for remote monitoring

The WEP/APP server software is the world famous Apache HTTPD, installed on Raspberry, running Fedora linux distro.

The monitoring web application is written in PHP / HTML5 using Bootstrap framework, which make it responsive.

DB SERVER

It stores data received from WEB/APP server.

The RDBMS is Mysql Community Edition installed on the same Raspberry of WEB/APP server