Electronic – arduino – the fastest and easiest way to transmit arduino’s sensor data to a PC wirelessly

arduinolatency

I have a specific problem :

  1. I'm working on a testing platform. It has to be absolutely isolated, so I cannot wire it back to my PC. I again reiterate it. There is no way to wire it to my PC. IT HAS TO BE ABSOLUTELY ISOLATED

  2. It has about 10 different sensors on it and I need to read sensor's data simultaneously at 100Hz. It is currently working fine with 16Hz, but I need to improve it further, so I think maybe in future sampling rates higher than 100 is beneficial. 7 Hz is the lowest possible value that doesn't botch the whole things up.

  3. I have a laptop on the platform which reads the sensor data via RS232, then it processes them in a fraction of a second and produce a control signal and send it to the actuators. It has to happen at real-time. Control algorithm is not heavy, it is several PIDs.

  4. It has 6 actuators with the fastest possible reaction time of 0.005 second.

  5. The main sensor currently is Microstrain 3DM-GX1. It is a very good sensors.

  6. I want to add a GY-80 sensor in parallel to 3DM-GX1. I want to test various filtering algorithms on the GY-80's output and compare them to 3DM-GX1.

  7. Platform has 6 degrees of freedom so I think laser transmission is not practical.

  8. Distance between the computer and the platform is at most 3 meters.

For some reasons I am not able to use the laptop anymore. I want to read the sensor's data with an Arduino, preferably Arduino Mega 2560. My problem is that I don't want to load the control algorithm to the Arduino.

IMHO the perfect solution is going to be a Wireless link between the Sensors via Arduino to my PC. This way my PC logs data and also the Control Algorithm can promptly calculate the feedback signal and send it to Arduino which will send them to the actuators. This immensely makes things easier for me.

I think I need a RS232 shield for the 3DM-GX1 & Arduino, + some wireless solution for sending data from both sensors to my computer. Then I need to send back the control signal back to the actuators wirelessly.

Now what is the fast and easy way to transmit the data between PC and Arduino in real-time?

Thank you in advance !

Best Answer

Easiest and fastest to laptop? I use RN42 or HC05 serial of arduino to bluetooth. then nearly any pc, laptop, phone or tablet can get the data.

You could also use HC05 and custom api to directly sample the data without an arduino.

You could use xbee, but then you need another xbee at pc. With bt that is likely already there.