Thingy:AQ Air Quality Monitoring System
Thingy:AQ, our new Bushfire / Wildland Fire Real-Time Monitoring System, has been designed to be a lightweight and easily deployable air pollution monitoring solution that can be installed permanently or quickly during a fire event. The sensor system supports multiple sensor nodes and a hardware central receiving unit, which collects information from the nodes. Multiple nodes will collect air quality information, which is then transmitted back to the central receiving unit for retrieval, and optional real-time analytics via an external system.
Thingy:AQ Sensor Nodes. These battery-powered Sensor Nodes (SN) measure air pollutants including fine particulate matter PM2.5, PM10, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and ozone. The Sensor Nodes also measure air temperature, humidity and provide geo-location data. A unique System ID identifying the Sensor Node, together with latitude, longitude and System Error status are stored on the Sensor Node and are transmitted in real time over long distance utilizing a LoRa encoded radio link.
We utilize LoRa technology, which offers a very compelling mix of long range, low power consumption and secure data transmission. Public and private networks using this technology can provide coverage that is greater in range compared to that of existing cellular networks. We also support optional alternative radio telemetry options including GSM/LTE and NBIot.
For further information and help on choosing the right telemetry options and specific gas sensor requirements please contact us.
FAT File System for Microchip Micro-controllers
Need to add low cost storage to a Microchip PIC18F, PIC24 or dsPIC33 microcontroller? The SD/MMC SD and SDHC cards provide a low cost option for adding high capacity storage to a PIC Microcontroller with minimal I/O requirements. Our driver is a SD/MMC Card File System with a sample application demonstrating DOS like command line interface.
Detailed information can be found on our FAT File System Software page along with reference hardware designs for integrating SD/MMC cards.
Bootloaders for Microcontrollers
A bootloader is an application that is installed on a micro-controller to enable the application software to be upgraded in the field without requiring a return to the service depot or factory. Companies that embed a bootloader into their products enable their field service personnel or end customers to be able to install new versions of the application software.
Brush Electronics has developed a family of bootloaders for the Microchip PIC18F, PIC24 and dsPIC33 families offering two classes of bootloaders, the encrypted bootloader and the standard (non-encrypted) bootloader. Brush Electronics bootloaders are available for a diverse range of media types for bootloading the processor including RS232, RS485, RS422, I2C, SPI, Ethernet, SD and SDHC media.
Watchdog Supervisory System
Deploying remote data acquisition systems in the field can be an expensive exercise. It can be very frustrating when an automated system intended to gather data for a long study fails early into the study as a result of a computer system glitch from which the acquisition system was not able to automatically restart.
Brush Electronics has developed a number of customer specific supervisory systems to enable the automatic restart of remote computer based data acquisition systems in the event of an application or system failure. The supervisory system monitors the correct behaviour of both the application and the target system. The supervisory system comprises the following subsystems:
- A supervisory application (SA) running on the system being protected. This application, independent of the data acquisition software running on the protected system, monitors the background behaviour of the protected application’s processes.
- An external, hardware based communications processor supervisor (CPS) is responsible for monitoring the activity of the SA application as well as external events under control of the protected application.
- A GMS/LTE modem for sending alerts and enabling the remote interrogation and configuration of the supervisory system.
Each of the Supervisory System’s subsystems are capable of initiating an application restart, operating system restart, sensor subsystem restart or full power cycling of the protected system in the event of a significant anomaly being detected. These systems have proven very successful in the field resulting in significant increases of the quantity and quality of data captured by the associated data acquisition systems
