Long Distance Wireless Transmission

[MGarry]

Good day everybody,

i'm working on a project that consists on acquiring several level measures from many tanks that are distant at least by 500km then sending them to the monitoring center (which is my location) so i can use them in my monitoring application using labview 8.6. The question is: is there any device from national instrument that can perform such a transmission using GSM or GPRS.

Thank you.

garry

[JoelWhittC]

Hello Garry,

You can use LabVIEW to program your application, it looks like someone has had the same idea as you already! Here is a case study that I hope will provide you with more information.

http://sine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-14652 

I am unaware of any out of the box solutions for this, though you may be able to find some example code with a little searching!

Thank you,

Joel C

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

[MGarry]

Hello Joel,

I appreciate your help, it seems to be the same idea as mine however what i'm searching for is a GSM/GPRS transmitter/receiver compatible with LabVIEW that allows to send an analog signal (4-20 mA) and also be able to reconstitute that signal so i can have in the reception the initial 4-20 mA form.

Thank you

Garry

[JoelWhittC]

Hello Garry,

I believe that you could use a Vector Signal Generator and a Vector Signal Analyzer in conjunction with the GSM/EDGE+ Measurement Toolkit to accomplish this. I'm not 100% on that though. These devices are generally used in test applications where a DUT is generally attached to both devices with coax cables. I don't see any reason why you couldn't attach an antenna and transmit information from one device to the other though. It just seems like an expensive cell phone though. I can look more into this if you need. It looks like in the case study from my last post, they used GSM modems and GPRS routers to send the data over the internet. We do not have anything that does this out-of-the-box.

Are you just trying to transmit data over long distances? It's pretty simple to write a program that can text your phone, send you an email, upload datalog files to an ftp, etc without hardware.

What is the actual application? Do you absolutely need to transmit the data over GSM/GPRS? Or is this just a way that you brainstormed to solve the transmission of data over long distances issue?

Thank you,

Joel C

National Instruments

[MGarry]

Hello Joel,

What i'm trying to do is this:

Get the level measure from each one of our clients silos (and there are many).

transmit the values in real time (each hour for example) to our monitoring station.

be able to read this values with Labview 8.6 so we can perform a stock control.

We are not obliged to use GSM/GPRS transmission we only presume it's the most appropriate way for M2M communication, any other suggestions are welcome.

Thank you

Garry

[Brian_A]

Hi Garry,

NI doesn't have anything that can send data that far. However you can couple NI Data Acquisition Products with Ethernet based Wireless bridges. One setup that comes to mind is using a networked cDAQ chassis (9181/9184/9188) to gather the data and then connect that to an Ethernet to 900MHz wireless bridge. On the other end you have another Ethernet to 900MHz bridge to the pc. NI Doesn't make an ethernet to 900MHz bridge but there are plenty of companies that do, and the bridging should be transparent to the PC and DAQ device. 

You could also use a NI-WSN system at the silos if you have many measurement points that are relatively close to each other (less than 1km) but not close enough to wire to one device and then connect the NI-WSN gateway to the 900MHz bridge to relay the data over the long distance.

Or a different scheme would be to "store and forward" using some type of Real-Time controller and a GSM to ethernet or serial gateway. You can have a program running on the Real-Time controller that stores the data and then it can forward that data with a web service or a user interface running on the PC. 

There are many other ways to do this but those are just a couple of examples off the top of my head.

Cheers,

Brian A

R & D Product Support Engineer | WSN/Network DAQ/Academic

National Instruments 

[Brian_A]

actually re-reading your post I doubt 900MHz would work since you need 500km. For some reason I was thinking 50km when I wrote my post. Because of that I think the store and forward scheme would be more along the lines that you would need. 

Cheers,

Brian A

R & D Product Support Engineer | WSN/Network DAQ/Academic

National Instruments 

[MGarry]

Can you provide me please with more details about this: how does it work, what does it need to take place (devices), how much could the solution cost?

And there is something else, is there any way that i can use a GSM/GPRS transmitter to send data to a database on the internet and recuperate the measures with LabVIEW in real time then integrate them in my program, is this possible?

Garry

[Brian_A · Accepted solution]

Hi Garry,

The basic idea is that at the measurment location you have some type of Smart controller. This can be anything that can collect and serve up the data to anther machine (your pc or "the Cloud" or a database). What I have seen before is that a WSN system will be set up at location with a Real-Time WSN gateway. The RT Gateway will collect the data from the wsn nodes and store the information in a .txt file or similar. Then the RT gateway will be connected to a 3G modem via the ethernet connection and the data can then be accessed remotely from any internet enabled PC. Another option would be to publish the data as a shared variable (WSN I/O variables are already in that form) and then the host PC can grab the data by using a vi that uses low level PSP variables. Using shared variables you would be able to see the latest value.

If you are using an RT gateway you can also program it to upload data to the Amazon Cloud using the vi in this link. 

I can't really help you determine price as I do not know your requirements beyond needing long distance transmision. What I would do is spec out specifically what measurments you want to take or what sensor you are planning on using at each location and the relative distances between the measrument points: ie. can you use WSN or a wired setup to measure 10 points instead of needing individual measurment devices at each point. Then you need to decide if you want to use Real-Time or not. If you are, you will need to account for a license for the Real Time module. Once you have all the measurment points and their locations speced out (a map or picture with relative locations would be a big help) call up your local NI help line (1-800-ASK-MYNI in the US) and they should be able to work directly with you to come up with a system and a price for the system. 

I hope that helps!

Cheers,

Brian A

R & D Product Support Engineer | WSN/Network DAQ/Academic

National Instruments 

[MGarry]

Thank you so much for your help.

Garry