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Hello, I'm new to this forum. I hope Im posting this in the right place.
I'm working on a project that involves the GPS location of safety lights on radio comunications towers. I need to show on Google maps the location of each tower, the current state of the lights and battery state.
I'm thinking in using an Arduino Nano, a GPS Ublox 6 ,SIM 800l V2.0 GSM GPRS and Lora DRF1276DM modules.
The idea is to send data through the GSM Network to a WEB Server and in case of no availability, use the lora backup to send the data to the nearest tower with connectivity.
The Nano boards will act as clients to the Web server. To protect the info I need some kind of encryption/authentication, whats your advice on this?
It would be nice if the server is located on a local telecom, but if this is the case, I’ll have to log in into a VPN to access the servers.
To visualize the data I’d like to use a Simple web page with a link to google maps and some relevant info, like the current state of batteries, the cell phone availability and some kind of log to know the last month data.
I was planning on using a database server in order to do this.
Do you think I'm on the right path? Any suggestions will be highly appreciated.
Thank you for your time,
have a nice day.
Welcome to the forum!
This sounds like an interesting project! 😊
First, I'd consider using an ESP8266 or ESP32 - both are cheaper, faster, and with more memory and options than the Nano (at about the same size!). The ESP32 even has dual core support (which surprisingly easy to use).
Next; For security reasons, I'm not sure if heavy-duty encryption is needed or all that critical, but you may want to consider using at least HTTPS to submit data to your database (a Nano may not be able to do this). Of course, you would also want some kind of authentication of course - to avoid bad people from submitting garbage to your database server.
Also: if submitting data with a FORM, then consider using the "POST" method (and not the GET method where the data is visible in the URL).
As for a database; a simple web-server can handle this with ease.
Thinking of communication, you may want to keep in mind that quite a lot of operators are dropping GSM 2G en 3G UMTS support. So I'd pick a GSM module that support 3G or even better 4G. You don't need the speed, but it would be crappy if you'd have to replace the modules within the next year or so. Keeping this in mind; GPRS may not be a great choice for new IoT projects.
Oh and I think with Google Maps you may need to look into how to use it for your application. You will need to sign up for an API key (which may not be free - I haven't read the fine print yet).
So here a first stab at it 😁
Is this what you had in mind?
Welcome to the forum!
This sounds like an interesting project! 😊First, I'd consider using an ESP8266 or ESP32 - both are cheaper, faster, and with more memory and options than the Nano (at about the same size!). The ESP32 even has dual core support (which surprisingly easy to use).
Sure I thought in buying a ESP32 if my Nano runs out of memory and so on.
Next; For security reasons, I'm not sure if heavy-duty encryption is needed or all that critical, but you may want to consider using at least HTTPS to submit data to your database (a Nano may not be able to do this). Of course, you would also want some kind of authentication of course - to avoid bad people from submitting garbage to your database server.
I understand that the communication with the server is made as HTTPS if you set the correct AT command, the modem accomplishes that task. But not 100% sure.
Also: if submitting data with a FORM, then consider using the "POST" method (and not the GET method where the data is visible in the URL).
Good idea, showing data on the URL is suceptible to be taken.
As for a database; a simple web-server can handle this with ease.
I tried the free services as 000webhost, but not sure why the database won't take my POSTs, I think it has to be related to the delays that I wrote in the code after running the POST method.
Thinking of communication, you may want to keep in mind that quite a lot of operators are dropping GSM 2G en 3G UMTS support. So I'd pick a GSM module that support 3G or even better 4G. You don't need the speed, but it would be crappy if you'd have to replace the modules within the next year or so. Keeping this in mind; GPRS may not be a great choice for new IoT projects.
Thats true, luckily on my country we still have GPRS and 4G boards are really expensive and hard to get, but I agree with you that on the near feature thats the way to go.
Oh and I think with Google Maps you may need to look into how to use it for your application. You will need to sign up for an API key (which may not be free - I haven't read the fine print yet).
That's what I noticed, I'll have to pay...But if the whole system works it could be worth it.
So here a first stab at it 😁
Is this what you had in mind?
Yes, I can copy part of the code so we can troubleshoot it if you are interested.
Thank you for your support.
@hans I can't find the reply I posted yesterday to the comments you wrote. But I found another old post I make 2 month ago that was similar to the one I posted yesterday. Can you help me with that? Maybe I thought that I posted it but it wasn't the case. Thanks.
