I need help with parts for a wireless sensing unit

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sshafiee
 
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I need help with parts for a wireless sensing unit

Post by sshafiee »

Hi,

I am new to Arduino and in general electronics. I need to build a sensing unit which can acquire signals from 3 microphones, thermometer ,gyro and accelerometer and send theses signals to a Raspberry Pi via bluetooth or wifi or both for analysis. I have no idea what type of Arduino to choose and what other parts (Bluetooth module which can send both audio signal and other type of signals, or amplifier, etc. ) to make sure they are compatible. I really appreciate it if someone can help me with this or recommend some references so I can learn where to start.

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: I need help with parts for a wireless sensing unit

Post by mikeysklar »

Sounds like a interesting project.

I think the Adafruit Sense would be a good unit to start with. It get s you blueooth, temp, gyro, accelerometer and mic.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/4516

You can add your own additional PDM mics.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/4346

On the Pi you will need a catcher script. I cobbled something for my OSX box to run a while back that had a similar purpose.

https://learn.adafruit.com/schluff-the- ... her-script

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sshafiee
 
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Re: I need help with parts for a wireless sensing unit

Post by sshafiee »

Thank you very much for the information. It's exactly what I was looking for. My only concern/question is if feather sense can provide enough bandwidth to broadcast the data with a relatively good temporal resolution specially signals from multiple microphones?

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: I need help with parts for a wireless sensing unit

Post by mikeysklar »

@sshafiee,

Great question about how much data you can move with the Feather Sense.

This Adafruit board is based on the nRF52840 chip which is using BLE. It is described by the manufacturer Nordic as having a maximum throughput over 1.3 - 1.4Mbps *one way, unacknowledged, best case*.

Do you have an estimate of the audio sample rate and bandwidth you require?

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic ... onnections

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sshafiee
 
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Re: I need help with parts for a wireless sensing unit

Post by sshafiee »

Hey @mikeysklar,
Thank you again for the link about max throughput. I think 1.4 Mbps would be sufficient for this sensor.
I tried to find some examples or information about how to set up a stable connection, and I was able to read information from my phone using BLE connect. However, I could not find any information about directly (independent of using Adafruit IO) broadcasting data from Adafruit Sense to another device(Phone or Pi). Is this even possible using Adafruit Sense, or I need to use different hardware?

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mikeysklar
 
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Re: I need help with parts for a wireless sensing unit

Post by mikeysklar »

Have you tried the BLE UART example? You could run one side on the Pi and the other side on your Feather Sense.

https://learn.adafruit.com/circuitpytho ... rt-example

The Schluff example I provided before is also using direct UART communication with the addition of AIO, but AIO is not necessary.

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