Some tests on LABEST laboratory have been made. The entire system was used to monitor different tests in a metallic plate. Although, the system concept can be validated, there is still a long road to long in order to achieve acceptable performances.
Next weeks are reserved for writting the dissertation, therefore, the development process will be stopped.
Picture of the metallic plate used on laboratory tests
The complete system assembled on LABEST
Last two weeks the integration of the complete system was made. Like it was expected a lot of bugs appeared. The debugging process has started and the final laboratory tests will be performed next week.
All the hardware is now fully operational. At this moment the system has 3 CAN-to-RS-232 gateways, 2 Waspmotes working WPAN Coordinators and, 3 Waspmotes as End-node devices.
Also the signal conditioning cirtuits have been tested and are fully operation. Next weeks will be reserved to the integration of the entire system.
On the last two weeks the aplication level of the communications protocol has been developed and it is now in the final stage.
Some tests have been created to validate the communications and study their performance.
The signal condition circuits for the sensors have been designed and it is expected that the final PCBs will be finished next week.
For the final tests it has been created a structure in small size and known behaviour to test the prototype system. A compactDAQ from National Instruments has also been configured to measure this small structure in order to get reference values.
At this point the CAN network is operational but the upper level protocol is still under construction.
The wireless communications are working with all the functions already developed and tested. A wide variety of tests have been made in order to understand the maximum speed that is possible to achieve. The upper protocol is fully developed for the slave nodes and for the master nodes is almost finished aswell.
The restrictions of the Waspmote platform have been studied and the process of choosing the sensors and designing the condition circuitry has now started.
The main goal is to have all the communications working by the end of this week.
The design of the PCB for the microprocessor AT90CAN128 that will be in charge of making the gateway between UART and CAN protocols has been design.
A network was created using the IEEE802.15.4 wireless protocol. It was implemented using the Waspmote modules. Sending and receiveing functions are now under development.
