System Down

Well, the system stopped reporting and replying on July 24th, for no apparent reason. I had it set to twitter periodically, and the last tweet was around 1:38 AM on July 24th. It did not respond to subsequent attempts to send text messages. From the AT&T account history page I see these text messages were actually delivered to the modem, but not reply was received. Since they were delivered, I assume power is on. Likely a computer crash, or application crash.

I now need to have someone local look at the system, which is problematic since I start it up using a sequence of complicated steps. Must design a one-button (or no-button) start, so the system can be simply rebooted and the application started simply.

AT&T Account and SIM Card Particulars

The Icon 322 GSM modem that is used to send and receive text messages requires you to insert a SIM card registered to an account in order to operate. I will attempt to describe here how  I got the SIM card and established an account with AT&T. It might seem unorthodox, and there are likely better ways of doing it,  but this was my first foray into the field and I had to feel my way along. If I did this again I believe I would simply go to an AT&T store and tell them you want a pay as you go SIM card, get the SIM from them and let them set up the account.

I think I mentioned that my first attempt at a home monitor used a Telit 865 GSM modem I bought from Sparkfun Electronics. The current design uses an Icon 322 modem and Asus net book PC. These notes apply to how I got the SIM card for the Telit setup working. I don't recall whether I had to do further work to use the SIM card in the Icon 322 modem, and will attempt to find out.

First, I ordered an AT&T SIM card from Amazon.  The order specified: AT&T SIM Card-Brand New Unactivated-SKU 71247. The cost was around $5.00.

Then I activated the SIM card with an AT&T account, and I registered it as a go-phone. I went to the AT&T web site for go phone, registered the SIM card to modem IMEA (357938020021374, use AT#CGSN command to get, or read from modem), and put $15 on account from credit card. I entered the ICCID number (89014103232848126223) from SIM card on web site. I was assigned the Go phone number 443 XXX-XXXX. This implies AT&T has locked the SIM card ICCID to the modem IMEI number. But this might not be the case, since I believe when I got the Icon GSM modem I simply transferred the SIM card from the Telit modem to the Icon modem and used it. I will look into this further and write another entry when I get an answer.

To make text messages cheaper I signed up on my AT&T account for a $10.00 for 1000 text message package, and then made it auto-renewing every month. This brings the monthly cost to $10.00 for the modem account.

Updated Blog Pages

I updated the About This Blog page to reflect a new way of presenting the key features of the monitor and control system  as a mini spec sheet.

I also initiated a google code project and added a preliminary drop of code to it. This code is very rough. It is right out of my dropbox code area and will require much improvement to make it meet minimum coding standards, both in content and organization. A new page was created called Source Code to describe it.

Updated 'About This Blog' Page

I have redesigned the About this Blog page to make it more like a spec sheet, providing the objectives of the monitor design and the approach to meeting them. I list the system characteristics, such as wireless, inexpensive to build and operate, open source, and then provide the current means of providing them.

This page is evolving to what I hope will be more of an overview of the monitor capabilities and how they are provided.

Alerts Actually work

Early this AM I got a text message on my cell saying our house lost power, and also a tweet saying the same thing. It is the first time we have lost power since before we left Maryland at the end of May, and a good real-world test of this feature.

The tweet, at about 4:30 AM:

zouckhome Zouck Home

"07/03/2011 04:29:22 3721 House Power Lost!!! Tin: 74 (67-80) Tout: 68 (50-101) A/C Pwr off."

 

After it came back around 6:42 AM it tweeted:

 

zouckhome Zouck Home

"07/03/2011 06:42:56 3721 Tin: 74 (67-80) Tout: 68 (50-101) A/C Pwr on."

Design Updated

I redid the crude hand-drawn design diagram, replacing it with a google documents drawing, and made minor rewrites on the Current Monitor Design Page.

Now to go biking over Passaconaway, the Kanc and over Bear Notch!

Design Details

Today I added a page containing a link to the current monitor design, which is written as a shared google document. The page title is "Current Monitor Design Details."