Synology is providing a Glacier backup tool which seems to be an easy way to backup data on the low cost amazon solution. I will not describe how to configure it a log of blogs are doing it and I do not like to be redundant. The question I did not find an easy answer was : will I be able to restore my backup even if my synology crashed and I would not be able to get one other…
Recently I killed on of SigFox Td1208 device by misprogramming it, destroying the bootloader. In a such situation serial port is not anymore accessible for programming. The use of JTAG port is a necessity. On the TD1208, jtag has been repaced by SWD which is a 2 wires port doing the same thing.
To use this port, you generally need a specific interface. These interfaces like Jlink are expensive (> 300€), some are less like BusPirate (30€). By the way, if you do not have it, you will have to order and wait for it. That’s why I’ve taken the choice of using my BeagleBone black device GPIO to pilot these signal. This code can easily be port to RaspberryPI…
Pir sensor
In a previous blog post I described how I built a PIR sensor connected to Internet, based on the use of a Raspberry Pi device. As you can read in this previous post, the solution have a certain number of complexities like requiring a power supply, a 3G modem …
As it was originally planed to be done, here is the design of the same product, based on a SigFox device. This is really interesting to demonstrate the differences and the advantages of this technology. Let’s review how to built it !
These two last days, I was participating to devoxx in Paris. One of the star topic of the event this year was Docker so I attempt different talk about this container technology I already has discovered in a previous JUG session. It was not an evidence that this technology was more than something interesting for DEV needing small, fast starting, small memory footprint, environment for testing. With my OPS hat, I did not catch the interest. This was before Devoxx and the different talk. The aspects I’ll detailed in this post have not been addressed during Devoxx, as much as I have seen, as mostly the DEV aspects have been addressed, I going to synthesize my opinion.
Raspberry Pi 3G PIR sensor
Basically, it is something I was looking to do with SigFox, but unfortunately yesterday I bricked my chip because of a wire unsoldered right in the middle of the upload of a new firmware version … By the way, I’ll do it later once it will be fixed.
So I had to built it on a raspberry as a short term solution. Read next to get details
In a previous post about SigFox technology, I told I will measure the power consumption to see if the device can be use with a battery easily. And what I can say is that they have made a great job on power saving with this device.
What I measure (with my really low cost multi-meter) is a standby consumption of 2uA and a transmission power of 45mA. The transmission of a message is not depending on the size of the message and is about 7s. As you can transmit up to 1 message every 15 minutes, the communication consumption is an average of 0,35mA/h.
Assuming battery from 750mA to 2500mA this is an autonomy from 4 months to 10 months. It’s a really interesting duration on battery and not comparable with a 3G communication system.
Now … testing is finish … I’ll start to implement a first POC for a project !
Hack fun !
In different previous post, I explained what is SigFox technology (a radio-communication system made for Internet Of Things, allowing a sensor to communicate with servers on Internet at an affordable price) and how to send data from a sensor to the SigFox backend.
This new post is explaining how to configure this back-end to get the sensor data loaded in your system and create your own application.
As described in a previous post, TelecomDesign chip can be customized to add your own application built-in the chip and made a really affordable IoT platform. This blog post is describing the first step to start building it. Read Next for details.