Wireless Generator Parameter Monitoring

[CT-Mike]

I am looking at starting with this setup as a baseline, especially since he has done all of the hard work in the coding and is freely offering it:

http://firebottleradio.com/watts/index.html

One of these on each leg of the output for monitoring current:

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Noninvasive-AC-Current-Sensor-100A-max-p-547.html

I then plan to expand and add output voltage, battery voltage, oil pressure, and frequency monitoring as well. May eventually try and setup remote start so the wife doesn't have to trudge out in the snow.

 

[Chainbreaker]

Generator Current Sensing with Arduino

Here is one solution for monitoring AC load/balancing. Although this particular application doesn't utilize any telemetry capability (Wi-Fi):

http://firebottleradio.com/watts/index.html

 

[Chainbreaker]

I am looking at starting with this setup as a baseline, especially since he has done all of the hard work in the coding and is freely offering it:

http://firebottleradio.com/watts/index.html

One of these on each leg of the output for monitoring current:

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Noninvasive-AC-Current-Sensor-100A-max-p-547.html

I then plan to expand and add output voltage, battery voltage, oil pressure, and frequency monitoring as well. May eventually try and setup remote start so the wife doesn't have to trudge out in the snow.

I didn't refresh and missed your earlier post. Looks like you already found what I later discovered! Agree he has a good start and it needs to be expanded.

 

[Chainbreaker]

Another parameter to monitor could be to buy a oil temp probe to put in place of the dipstick and measure oil temp. In addition to using for engine temp monitoring on an air cooled generator; oil temp could be a good parameter to determine how long to apply glow plug heat if using an added auto start function.

 

[CT-Mike]

I didn't refresh and missed your earlier post. Looks like you already found what I later discovered! Agree he has a good start and it needs to be expanded.

I've ordered the components he calls out, as well as an Ethernet shield so that it can be connected to my network. I plan to add oil pressure, coolant temperature, voltage, frequency, battery voltage, and maybe eventually work on a remote push button start feature.

 

[Chainbreaker]

I've ordered the components he calls out, as well as an Ethernet shield so that it can be connected to my network. I plan to add oil pressure, coolant temperature, voltage, frequency, battery voltage, and maybe eventually work on a remote push button start feature.

Hopefully you will share your progress here or start your own thread. I'm not an EE, Programmer or Electronics Technician...however I can read schematics and know my way around circuit boards, components and computers. With a similar reference go-by, a few tips and some research I can usually figure out how to achieve an objective. I might buy an Arduino starter kit to cut my teeth on first (make my mistakes and learn to program it) and then monitor what you and others work out and choose a path to implement myself.

Good luck should be a fun and rewarding project!

 

[tim292stro]

Has anyone built a telemetry system for their generators? Something that would MONITOR the parameters and be visible via a wifi link or cell data link?

I'm looking at a building project. Something that is more budget friendly. I'm especially interested in adding parameter trending and the ability to monitor things on my MEP003a such as heat temp.

I want to build something with robust IO. To keep it simple and reliable I'm looking at micro/nano PLCs. Going with a PLC it could start out as a monitoring system and grow into an autostart.
One goal will be to keep it generic so it could be used with water cooled or air cooled machines. Choose the sensors (or piggyback existing ones) to get the info you want.
I prefer to have analog data for critical engine parameters such as temp and oil pressure. That gives the option to create alarms on trends in addition to thresholds. Plus its just cool.
This should be a fun project.

I'll most likely use that or a Raspberry Pi as the controller and web server. I want to use hardened IO and preferably something modular so it can be customized for different gensets. The challenge will be to keep the cost modest.

So I'm distilling down your requirements as you write them out. You will find that most commonly unless you are dropping in a brand new Cummins Power or Cat Power gen-set with OBD/CAN, remote monitoring is done with "building blocks". You might want to separate your functions (monitor vs. control). There was mention of connectivity, but no real focus on if/how you want to do that. What's your end-game here? Are you building this for yourself or are you building this to try and sell it (obviously the second case comes with a bunch of complications)?

There are commercial generator controllers that have safety and auto-start built in and ready to go. One e-place example is $150, has over-temperature and oil-pressure switch inputs (unless you plan to screw with it constantly, go-no-go is enough for a monitor), auto-start control (with manual over-ride and glow-plug control output), hour meter, over-crank protection, over-frequency monitor, and runs on both 12/24V engine power. If you want a cheaper one and don't need the frequency/RPM display (and don't mind ordering directly from a China seller) you can get this $50 version that only has status LEDs - making this a "remote monitor" would only require pulling in the 8 LED states, which you can do using a single opto-isolators and an I2C shift register via text message with an off-the-shelf cellular monitor box like this.

Doing it this way would keep most of your changes out of a UL-listed generator controller - the only internal changes would be putting an opto-isolator in series with a low-power status LED, and passing the outputs to a new connector.

 

[DieselAddict]

I'm not doing this to sell. Only for myself and to share a how-to if anyone else wants to try it.

Since my background is more in line with PLCs I figured that would be the shortest learning curve for me.

 

[tim292stro]

How far "wireless" are you hoping to reach?
What task or function are you trying to accomplish with this system?

 

[DieselAddict]

When the generator is online I want to have a web based dashboard to show all the operating parameters. Its a pretty simple setup. I figured once the webserver was figured out anyone else wanting to build one could use whatever data connection that suited them (wifi or cell).

 

[CT-Mike]

When the generator is online I want to have a web based dashboard to show all the operating parameters. Its a pretty simple setup. I figured once the webserver was figured out anyone else wanting to build one could use whatever data connection that suited them (wifi or cell).

My plan is to run a conduit from the machine to the basement, about 10' max. This will contain all of the sensor wires for parameters that I want to monitor and they will connect to the Arduino. The Arduino will be connected directly to my home network via an Ethernet shield added to the Arduino. That way I am hoping that I can mirror the local TFT display at the Arduino via a web server that can be viewed on my phone, iPad, etc.

 

[DieselAddict]

My plan is to run a conduit from the machine to the basement, about 10' max. This will contain all of the sensor wires for parameters that I want to monitor and they will connect to the Arduino. The Arduino will be connected directly to my home network via an Ethernet shield added to the Arduino. That way I am hoping that I can mirror the local TFT display at the Arduino via a web server that can be viewed on my phone, iPad, etc.

Awesome idea. Unfortunately since mine is trailer mounted and used in multiple locations I have to go with a wireless solution.

 

[tim292stro]

Simple, PLC/Embedded-PC (RaspberryPi/Arduino/etc...) reads interprets IO/analog values, writes to an entry in either a Redis or SQLite database.

Any web server or browser can read from those natively (HTML5, PHP, Java Script). Off the shelf Guage code is available:

http://cayuse.systems/articles/canvas-gauge/
or
gauges.js
or others...

Web page code can be set to poll a DB for new data, simple to script it into the value for the gauge needle.

Run a RaspberryPi B+ V2 with Raspberian (Debian), Ethernet already on board, you can do a Firefox or Chrome browser in fullscreen kiosk mode referring to a local web server and DB.

 

[DieselAddict]

That was pretty much what I was thinking.

 

[DieselAddict]

I'm moving forward with the data collection project. I have some hardware together and I'm prototyping it on the bench. The goal is to have a modular platform to do monitoring and/or auto start. In the case of the MEP831a to also do engine speed management.

Got lots of testing to do.

 

[Triple Jim]

What hardware did you get so far?

 

[DieselAddict]

Using a raspberry pi 2. I have a piplates io board. Working on the signal conditioning and isolation stuff now.

 

[Triple Jim]

Excellent! Have fun and keep us posted with the details please.

 

[tim292stro]

If you do Perl on Raspbian (Debian Linux for Raspberry Pi), I can give you a hand with the code a bit - in fact I'd recommend making this open source so anyone can copy/improve/debug.

 

[Triple Jim]

Not to contradict, but my vote would be to do it in C, so it's more universal.