Wireless Data Transfer

[El_Cheapo]

Greetings.

I am working on an antenna tracking system.  I'm in the planning stages now, haven't gotten close to writing labview code yet.  I have picked out a pan and tilt unit and a GPS unit.  However for the next step I am at a loss, and was hoping to get some support from these forums.  The antenna tracking system is mounted to a tower and it needs to track a remote unit.  My best idea is to use GPS to track the unit, however I don't know how to transfer the GPS coordinates from the remote unit to the antenna tower.  The remote unit is a truck, so I have plenty of space.  I was hoping there was a piece of hardware with existing labview code that wirelessly transfers coordinates or data in general (perhaps at a low frequency?). Otherwise, I am open to suggestions on how to get the GPS coordinates from the remote unit to the antenna tracking unit on the tower.

Thank you in advance. 

[LVbum42]

We do have an NI GPS simulation tooklit available on our site.  However I was able to locate a community example that may be able to help you get started.

LabVIEW GPS Receiver/Decoder:  https://decibel.ni.com/content/groups/uvlabview/blog/2011/03/29/labview-gps-receiverdecoder

Regards,

Isaac S.

[unclebump]

I recently used a pair of these for wireless modbus tcp at 5Ghz.

http://www.anybus.com/products/wireless_bridge.shtml

[johnsold]

El cheapo,

What is the maximum distance between your truck and the antenna tower? What kind of terrain will the truck be traversing? Will there be objects, such as buildings or mountains, between the truck and the antenna tower?  How much loss of data can you tolerate if you temporarily lose the signal?  How fast will the truck travel? Can you have relay stations or are your restricted to just the truck and the tower?

All of these things are relvant in designing a radio communications system for a mobile device.

Lynn

[Aerolab]

Hi @unclebump,

I am looking into doing this, can you share your experience with these products?

[unclebump]

Very reliable, but I'm using them at a distance of about 5 feet. I have a pick and place unit that twists 180 degrees 2x every five seconds. We were eating proximity switch cables at a high rate. I put an Ethernet I/O module out on the pick and place that is connected to the anybus unit. The two modules act like a single wire connection between the plc and the I/O module.

[Aerolab]

Okay great, that's good to hear, thanks! I'm new to wireless data transfer and I'm trying to figure this out for myself for the first time. If you don't mind answering a few questions, I'd really appreciate it. I'll ask them here, but the answers are probably pretty involved, so I understand if I don't hear back. Here's may application:

I am writing software that controls and acquires data from wind tunnels. The company owner really would like to be able to control and acquire data from a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 tablet/laptop so I'm working on that at the moment. We typically use cDAQ chassis, but I'm open to cRIOs as well and am familair with their programming both on the RT and FPGA targets. The hangup is that we are using ABB VFDs to control the fand via Modbus TCP/IP. I know NI sells their wireless access points and that would take care of the data acquisition part, but since there are no ethernet ports on the surface (and if there were, that would defeat the purpose to use them), I want to make sure my wireless hardware all works together. So here are my questions:

1) Do you know if using these ANYBUS nodes with a wireless access point would cause them to interfere in any way with eachother?

2) There are two ports on NIs MOXA access point gateway they sell. Do you think I could plug in the Modbus line from the VFD and use it to get the modbus signal through?

Like I said, I'm a complete novice when it comes to the wireless game. Any help you can give is much appreciated!

[unclebump]

You can get the Anybus nodes in bluetooth, 2.4 and 5Ghz frequencies. So you should be able to isolate the range between devices and/or networks. The bigger question is do you really want machine control over the normal office wireless environment or a dedicated network connection. As long as the Surface Pro 4 network frequency is in the same range, it should be able to login. What happens when the wireless network goes down and you can't stop a wind tunnel?

They have a new product.

https://www.anybus.com/products/wireless-index/anybus-wireless-bolt/detail/anybus-wireless-bolt---et...

I'm not familiar with NI MOXA hardware.

[Aerolab]

That is a good question. I'll have to build in some error handling to generate safe actions for loss of signal events I suppose. There are also other hard emergency stop buttons placed in and around the tunnel, so there are other ways to stop the tunnel opperation.

I appreciate all of your help. I'll definitely look more into this and see if I can generate some example code which I'll post here when I'm done. Thanks!