This week I worked with Diva to to verify we can receive input data from two different microcontrollers connected to different sensors. We were successfully able to collect data with a microphone sensor and send it over our communication channel to our raspberry pi. (See Diva’s report for a photo).
I also worked on testing the limitations of our communication system as Professor Tamal brought to my attention that the networking capabilities of a Raspberry Pi are fairly weak. We are able to receive messages when the microcontroller is placed in any part of the room however once I had more than 2 sensors things break down and we cannot receive any messages. Below is some data I collected with two sensors, the mac address is the unique identifier and I also collected the signal and timestamp.
I used this blog http://www.steves-internet-guide.com/multiple-client-connections-python-mqtt/ to try to work through some of these communication issues and try a different approach to what I am currently doing. I still need to perform more research as I haven’t found many others experiencing this issue online. This week I plan to look into this some more as well as possibly investigate a different protocol however this would not be ideal as it seems MQTT can integrate nicely with our web app.