[olug] Question about Motorola Canopy wireless equipment

Wed Nov 19 15:35:56 UTC 2003

Have you thought about satellite telemetry?  We in the US Army Corps of
Engineers have had great success with using the NOAA GOES system with Sutron
Corporation Data Collection Platforms (DCPs), along with other brands.  We
have over 500 stations in the Missouri River basin covering seven states and
for the most part the system is rock solid.  The system can also operate on
trunk radio, phone lines, point to point, etc.  The DCP's are not exactly
cheap but they run and run and run.  We have them in all weather conditions
powered by solar and they do what Sutron says they do. 

Just a thought, if you are shooting environmental data then GOES is the bird
for you.  Just remember anyone with a direct readout ground station (DRGS)
or a local readout ground station (LRGS) can read what you are shooting.
That is the requirement of bouncing off the GOES system.  It was engineered
to provide high data availability for public environmental data.

If you need more info contact me off the list and I will point you to the
companies and NOAA sites that explain how 95% of the water control and
environmental data in the USA is collected.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Johnson [mailto:eric_j at oasis.novia.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 9:15 AM
To: Omaha Linux User Group
Subject: Re: [olug] Question about Motorola Canopy wireless equipment

Thanks for the response!

Here's some clarification on our needs:

1) Everything will be stationary, environmental sensors or other equipment
that is permanently installed in one place (on one end, at least). I don't
want to say on the list exactly what this is for, although it's probably
not hard to guess.

2) We can install antennae that will be above any crop canopy, but may
experience line-of-sight issues from rolling terrain or trees.

3) It does need to be fairly realtime.

4) We frequently will not be close enough to anyone else's infrastructure,
but we can do clusters and use some other communications link between the
clusters and base (although expense is always an issue in our market --
particularly recurring expense like monthly phone charges).

5) The number of remote nodes will vary between as few as 10-20 and as
many as 500+

6) We are currently using RF Neulink RF9600 radio modems. The 9600 baud is
not generally a problem, although in high-collision situations, the speed
is an issue. Data packets tend to be quite small (generally under 256
bytes, although some can be larger).

7) Our biggest customers tend to be in the most remote areas -- Eastern
Washington, Texas, New Mexico and the like.

8) When our equipment is running, there is water everywhere. From the
sales-droid information, it looks like that is probably not a big issue
for this equipment.

Along with the Canopy stuff, do you know of anything else that sounds like
a good fit?

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, neal rauhauser wrote:

>    If you're looking for an inexpensive way to get telemetry from ag
> gear  I have some questions for you:
>
> 1. does it need to be real time, or can it be dropped off by the machine
> once it gets close enough to a radio facility?
>
> 2. if it is real time data how fast are you going? If you don't need
> more than a 64k channel there are much better solutions, in terms of
> central site cost & maintenance trouble than using Canopy.
>
> 3. how many systems are you talking about tracking? Are you close enough
> to Sprint/Verizon towers to use their internet via cell? Yes, it costs
> monthly, but its predictable and wireless troubleshooting gets *very*
> expensive.
>
>
>
>
> Eric Johnson wrote:
> > Has anyone on the list used or evaluated Motorola's Canopy wireless
stuff?
> >
> > If so, what are the real pros and cons and performance limitations?
> >
> > Our proposed use would be to provide a telemetry connection for
equipment
> > in the field (literally in the field: agricultural equipment). The
common
> > distance between nodes would be one mile or more and the central base
> > station could be many miles from the remote locations.
> >
> > -- Eric Johnson
> > -- eric_j at oasis.novia.net
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------
> > "The Wachowski brothers have delivered a dud so disappointing,
> >     they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion"
> >
> > -- something I read on /.
> >
> >             /*\         ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN
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> >              X          - AGAINST MS ATTACHMENTS
> >             / \
> > --------------------------------------------------------------
> > _______________________________________________
> > OLUG mailing list
> > OLUG at olug.org
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> >
> >
>
>
> --
> mailto:neal at lists.rauhauser.net
> phone:402-301-9555
> IM:Neal R Rauhauser
> "After all that I've been through, you're the only one who matters,
> you never left me in the dark here on my own" - Widespread Panic
>
> _______________________________________________
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>

-- Eric Johnson
-- eric_j at oasis.novia.net

--------------------------------------------------------------
"The Wachowski brothers have delivered a dud so disappointing,
    they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion"

-- something I read on /.

            /*\         ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN
            \ /         - AGAINST HTML EMAIL
             X          - AGAINST MS ATTACHMENTS
            / \
--------------------------------------------------------------
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