Remote sensing system
Overview
The system consisted of a set of sensors for airborne threat detection. Immunity to electromagnetic interference became one of the most important requirements.
When I received the project, the hardware sensors and actuators were integrated on a prototype general-purpose “IoT sensor board”, with several features common to many real-world applications: I2C bus, watchdog timer, battery monitor, optional Ethernet, and the “Arduino Feather” form factor for a plug-in compute module.
The final delivery of the software system consisted of embedded code for the updated sensor system, in C++, built for the Espressif ESP32 on a custom compute module, along with a suite of build tools with integrated help, and monitoring tools for live interaction with installed base.
Detection at a distance
Details
Some features included in this development:
Advanced high-performance 3-layer redundant + cached file system (RAM/FRAM/Flash).
Byte-serial file system on FRAM, over slow serial bus. Protocol also available for remote use.
All items in file system CRC-protected in transit and in storage.
File system headers also CRC-protected, and duplicated for power-down safety.
Interaction with cloud applications.
A mix of 85% C++ (for the embedded application), and the rest for bash scripting (domain-specific tools), python (data processing), installation assistance, etc.