In my last project I wrote a simple mobile app to control a relay (triggered by the hydrometer) and see what the temperature and moisture is using a DHT11 sensor. Granted it is cheap and there are other better sensors out there. It will not provide readings if you query it to often (two second limit) - this weakness could also apply to other sensors so maybe this will help someone. I mentioned that the solution would be to implement a "proxy" (fancy word I know).
So the fix goes something like this:
- receive a get request from a client,
- check if seven seconds have passed since last time a request has been made,
- if true -> request new readings from the sensor and update the cache
- else -> use the data from the cache (not querying the sensor = happy sensor),
- send the data back to the client
And guess what? This works like a dream. I have modified some of the garden project code to add more requests per second. In the "no proxy" version of the arduino sketch I am testing it with four active scripts that try to get the latest data from the sensor - the failure rate is 50% = bad. Later on I upgrade the sketch to see how that stacks up. And for the final test I go all nuts and create a page that has eight scripts asking for the data - the nano with the ethernet module doesn't seem to be bothered by that at all. Maybe some time in the future I will do some stress testing of the ENC28J60 and see how much punishment it can actually take in the real world.
A short video demo and the source code are provided below. Enjoy!
So the fix goes something like this:
- receive a get request from a client,
- check if seven seconds have passed since last time a request has been made,
- if true -> request new readings from the sensor and update the cache
- else -> use the data from the cache (not querying the sensor = happy sensor),
- send the data back to the client
And guess what? This works like a dream. I have modified some of the garden project code to add more requests per second. In the "no proxy" version of the arduino sketch I am testing it with four active scripts that try to get the latest data from the sensor - the failure rate is 50% = bad. Later on I upgrade the sketch to see how that stacks up. And for the final test I go all nuts and create a page that has eight scripts asking for the data - the nano with the ethernet module doesn't seem to be bothered by that at all. Maybe some time in the future I will do some stress testing of the ENC28J60 and see how much punishment it can actually take in the real world.
A short video demo and the source code are provided below. Enjoy!
// This works for the nano only !!!!
// The "proxy" version !
#include <SPI.h>
#include <UIPEthernet.h>
#include <dht.h>
#define aPin A5 // Defines pin number to which the sensor is connected
dht DHT; // Creats a DHT object
boolean reading = false;
unsigned long lastMillis; // global variable !
const unsigned long timeAllowed = 7000; // The sensor is allowed to be queried every 7 seconds !
String temperature = ""; // this will hold the temp from sensor
// Setup the static network info for you arduino
byte ip[] = { 192, 168, 7, 177 }; // IP Address
byte subnet[] = { 255, 255, 255, 0 }; // Subnet Mask
byte gateway[] = { 192, 168, 7, 1 }; // Gateway
byte mac[] = { 0xDE, 0xAD, 0xBE, 0xEF, 0xFE, 0xED }; // MAC Address
EthernetServer server = EthernetServer(80); // Port 80
String HTTPget = "";
void setup()
{
Ethernet.begin(mac, ip, gateway, subnet); // setup ethernet with params from above
server.begin();
lastMillis = millis(); // Allocate something at the start and compare later on...
Serial.begin(9600);
// The initial read !
int readData = DHT.read11(aPin); // Reads the data from the sensor
float t = DHT.temperature; // Gets the temperature
temperature = String(t);
Serial.print("First temp reading: ");
Serial.println(temperature);
Serial.println("Setup process complete..");
}
void loop()
{
// listen for incoming clients
EthernetClient client = server.available();
if (client)
{
// send http reponse header
client.println("HTTP/1.1 200 OK");
client.println("Content-Type: text/html");
client.println("Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *"); // if you ever work with phonegap...
client.println();
// process request.
processClient(client);
}
}
void processClient(EthernetClient client)
{
// http request will end with a blank line
boolean lineIsBlank = true;
while (client.connected())
{
if (client.available())
{
char c = client.read();
if(reading && c == ' ') reading = false;
if(c == '?') reading = true; // ? in GET request was found, start reading the info
//check that we are reading, and ignore the '?' in the URL, then append the get parameter into a single string
if(reading && c != '?') HTTPget += c;
if (c == '\n' && lineIsBlank) break;
if (c == '\n')
{
lineIsBlank = true;
}
else if (c != '\r')
{
lineIsBlank = false;
}
}
}
if (HTTPget == "sensor1")
{
// First... Let me check when was the last reading done...
unsigned long currentMillis = millis();
if (currentMillis - lastMillis > 7000)
{
lastMillis = millis(); // replace with new figure
// Get the temp from sensor !
int readData = DHT.read11(aPin); // Reads the data from the sensor
float t = DHT.temperature; // Gets the values of the temperature
temperature = String(t); // update...
HTTPget = String(t);
lastMillis = millis(); // replace with new figure
Serial.print("It has been more than 7 seconds...");
Serial.println(t);
}
else
{
// Provided the requesting device with the last known value
HTTPget = temperature;
Serial.print("Cached figure...");
Serial.println(temperature);
}
}
client.print(HTTPget);
delay(1); // give the web browser a moment to receive
client.stop(); // close connection
HTTPget = "";
}