Can the PINK do any of this?

ElectricAye

I'm just wondering.... what if I had a remote station with internet access and I wanted the station to send me an email once a day to tell me about the progress of an experiment that was taking place there. Let's say the email would contain data on the order of, oooh, a couple of kilobytes. Is the PINK able to do that? And could I use the internet to send commands for operating relay switches, etc. at that remote station? Can anyone point to some examples where people have already accomplished this and done so with beaming satisfaction?

cheers,
Mark

Mike Green

The PINK can certainly send e-mail once a day. The PINK documentation shows how to send e-mail. I'm not sure what the maximum message length would be. Worse comes to worst, you could split messages into two or more pieces and recombine them at the receiving end.

You could also use the internet to change variables in the PINK and the Stamp or Propeller could periodically read these variables and operate stuff based on the values of these PINK variables. That's how the PINK is intended to be used.

Use the Google search engine (search.parallax.com) to search "Completed Projects" and the Stamp forum for people's experience.

ElectricAye

Okay, Mike, it looks like I'll be up to my eyebrows in PINK sometimes this Fall, then, provided I make it through the gauntlet of my own ignorance of SD cards and such.

thanks for the amazingly fast reply!
(I sometimes get the feeling you're answering my questions even before I ask them.)

all smiles,
Mark

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It might be the Information Age but the Eon of Ignorance has yet to end.

Chris Savage

Mark,

Message length for e-mail is 64 bytes. While it may not seem like much it’s not really intended to send out a large packet. Another option, besides viewing the web page data in real-time is to have the PINK Module send UDP Packets to a target…possibly another PINK Module. This could be used to give you a virtual real-time display. For example, in an Alarm System I am working on, I am planning on having the system sending UDP messages to a desktop box which allows me to see the status of the panel at home from work.

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Chris Savage
Parallax Engineering

ElectricAye

Hi Chris,
after thinking about it, even 64 bytes might be worth it. Just setting up some bit strings that indicate whether different systems are working within a range would go a long way (better than driving to remote locations every two days).

thanks,
Mark

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It might be the Information Age but the Eon of Ignorance has yet to end.

Sniper King

Another thing you might try, is constant monitoring. Instead of email, you could send UDP packets with data in real time. Though you may drop a packet every once in a while you could send a status packet of every device you are monitoring individually and write a little peice of software that gives you some green and red lights as to status. If a pcket is lost the stautus wont change but chances are the next cycle of packet will refresh that bad packet.

I am using several PINKs in my projects.·They are reliable.

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·- Ouch, thats not suppose to be hot!··


Michael King
Application Engineer
R&D
Digital Technology Group

ElectricAye

SniperKing said...
I am using several PINKs in my projects. They are reliable.

That's cool. That's the kind of thing I wanted to know.

Chris Savage

Yes, using that method would allow you to literally recreate the status displays remotely and update them in real-time (minus latency). The less expensive and simpler route would be to simply have a web page set up with all the relevant information. Bear in mind with e-mail that you need an SMTP server that does not require SSL and uses standard ports.

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Chris Savage
Parallax Engineering

ElectricAye

Thanks, Chris, you've sold me on this. The web page concept would do the job.

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It might be the Information Age but the Eon of Ignorance has yet to end.