Sensors

How to choose and connect sensors to TMOR

Sensor introduction

Out there is a huge variety of different sensors. Sensors which capture humidity, temperature, magnetic fields, light intensity or acceleration to name a vew. With TMOR we support a small subset of those sensors out of the box. We put our emphasis on the Dallas 1-wire protocol as it allows to connect many sensors to a single port/bus. We provide a 1-wire bus on the TMOR base station where you can add up to 8 1-wire sensors such as the temperature sensors DS18B20 . The brick module supports right now one 1-wire sensor.

Next to the 1-wire bus we support also A/D input ports as well as digital ports with a current with a max voltage current of 3.3V. These ports are right now only available on the TMOR brick module.

The TMOR brick also contains two digital output ports which can be controlled by the TMOR software. This way you can control physical objects via the internet. It nicely rounds up our value offering and paves your way into the domain of internet of things.

The following table shows the current sensors capablities of the TMOR system:

Module / Functionality Brick Raspi as base station Tinker board as base station
1-wire bus 1 bus 1 sensors up to 8 sensors
Analog input ports 3 ports
Digital input ports 4 ports
Digital output ports 3 ports

1-wire sensor generals

We successfully test up to 8 DS18B20 1-wire temperature sensors connected to the base station. The current Brick supports one DS18B20 1-wire temperatur sensor. The here depicted DS18B20 1-wire temperature sensors are water proof. The wire coloring of this sensors is as follows:
- Yellow: GND (Ground)
- Green: SIGN (Signal)
- Red: VCC (Supply voltage)
Note: Seperatly purchased 1-wire sensors might have a different wire color coding. It turned out to be of good practice to note the address of the sensor on the sensor itself by using a sticker.

Version: V2

Date: 2017.07.20

Category: Sensor support

Base Station: Raspi up to 8 / Tinker no support

Brick: 1

Support:

IO input ports - Digital and mechanical switches

We support the connection of digital and mechanical switches. Mechancal switches come in handy to capture movements such as opening and closing doors and windows.
For the time being only the Brick provides IO ports. Each brick supports up to 4 IO ports. The address of the input ports is:

  • D0
  • D1
  • E6
  • E7
The brick direct rule needs to be configured to make use of the digital input ports.

Version: V2

Date: 2017.07.20

Category: Sensor support

Base Station: not supported

Brick: 4

Rating:

Analog input ports

The analog ports are ideal to capture contimous values such as light intensity or humidity. The analog input ports are in a basic version implemented but not fully supported yet. In order to measure analog data you need to have a brick. The analog ports are labeled as:

  • ADC1
  • ADC2
  • ADC3
The analog input ports provide a potentiometer to adjust the operating point of the analog digital converter. The resolution of the analog input port is 2^10 - e.g. the numerical values are between 0 and 1024.

Since Version: V2

Date: 2017.07.20

Category: Sensor support

Base Station: not supported

Brick: 3

Rating:

Digital output ports

The output ports or aka actors can change the status of an output port. The analog ports are labeled as:

  • PB0 (PIN 10) RED LED
  • PB1 (PIN 11) YELLOW LED
  • PB2 (PIN 12) GREEN LED with 5V power driver
The port status can be changed manually or via the two rule engines (rule engine and brick direct rule engine).

Since Version: V2

Date: 2017.07.20

Category: Sensor support

Base Station: not supported

Brick: 3

Rating: