Inexperienced beginner question...

Neo Angelus · Post by **Neo Angelus** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 2:13 pm

Dear Forum Inhabitants,

I was searching for a way to input sensor data to the computer, when I found the RemoteSensor project on the site, which is the best solution. It completely fits the project, though I have never built anything with AVR-thingies. Thus I downloaded the two *.pd files(receiver.pdf, transmitter.pdf). I can read those and could go to the hardware store for the components and build the receiver and transmitter. Though as I have no previous experience I got a bit lost in all the information and wondered if that was all I needed to do to get it to work? And it says the programs a made for unix, but I want to use them under windows and just need the value of the sensors, I have a bit of experience with C++ and other languages, so the only question I have is, is it possible to retrieve just the value of the sensors? I thank you for the patience as it must seem rather thumb.

Post by **christian** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 3:08 pm

If you have never done a similar hardware project, you'll have a steep learning curve. The project is not documented to the point where it is fool-proof and the PDF files may even be slightly out of date. The EAGLE files are the definitive reference. It's likely that you will have to modify the circuits slightly if you can't get the same receiver and transmitter modules.

Running this project on Windows should be no problem, though. The sensor daemon listens for incoming data and simply logs it to a CSV file. You can read the most recent values from there. If you have experience with C/C++, you can easily modify the sensor daemon according to your needs.

Neo Angelus · Post by **Neo Angelus** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 7:45 pm

thank you very much for the feedback. I am just going to try. The first project I made was some picProgrammer, which to my surprise worked. One final question though, do I need to program the ATMEGA8-16pi or the TINY26LP? Because then I would need a programmer, which I do not have. Thus, if that is the case, which one would you recommend?

Post by **christian** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 7:49 pm

You need to flash the firmware into both of them, of course.

You can easily build your own programmer with a couple of wires connected to the parallel port of your PC. Simply do a web search for AVR ISP or something like that.