Creating an 802.11 transmitter and reading the data from a WiFi router.

Question

There are 2 parts to this question. Feel free just to give me URLs to articles or suggest books, too, as the answer is probably a bit in depth for a quick forum response.

1) I need to sense the wattage flowing through a pair of wires and transmit data about it via 802.11. I guess a micro controller is involved, but I'm not sure where to begin. No security necessary. I just want the transmitter to broadcast the data at regular intervals (e.g., 1 frame per second).

2) I need to pick up the data broadcast in step 1 from my 802.11 router. I want to be able to do this for any number of transmitters in step 1. Does each transmitter in step 1 have a special kind of ID that I can look for from my 802.11 router? I don't even know how to get a "handle" on my router to see what data it's receiving. So, first, how do I get a hold of my router, then how do I see these possibly multiple data streams coming from my transmitters in step 1.

Thanks, Jay

Answer 1

I'm not sure (!) I can answer all of the above!

For the micro-controller, you may want to look at the open Arduino platform. There's some wireless capability documented here.

When you collect the data from these micro-controllers, each will have a unique hardware address and an IP address. So you can determine which is which by the address of the connecting server (most likely you'll pick up the IP address).

So the above is certainly feasible. However it's quite a lot of work.

Answer 2

What you are looking for is embedded wifi. It will take awhile searching, but you should be able to find exactly what you want, as there is a fairly good variety of devices available out there.

http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=2018&mcparam=en542255

Answer 3

Sounds like a job for XBee's (see here.) These are designed to operate as low power wireless sensors. If you're lucky you wont even need an external microcontroller as they can transmit data that they read on their own I/O pins.

There are concentrators available that allow them to be connected to normal wired or wifi networks.