SparkFun Forums

[daleevr]

I'm trying to build a little black box so to speak that will sense an impact and send a email or text message when the impact occurs over wifi and/or cellular. wifi is preferred and cellular as a last choice but both available if possible. I'm new to this so I kinda don't know where to start much less code. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks,
Dale

[skimask]

How would an impact occur over wifi, much less cellular?

[daleevr]

This is the scenario. Once constructed the box would sit in a vehicle. If the vehicle had a impact with something the box would sense the impact. Once the impact was felt the board would send an email or text. The email or text is sent over wifi or cellular! Thanks for your reply.

[lyndon]

Beaglebone black, accelerometer, and a wifi dongle/cellular modem. Done!

Oh, yeah, and a crapton of signal processing software. Now done!

[daleevr]

Thanks for the reply. Now just getting it together!

[notexactly]

I think a BBB may be a bit overkill for this. Any suitable microcontroller + accelerometer + ESP8266 + any cellular board (e.g. SparkFun Cellular Shield, Adafruit Fona, Konekt Dash) should do, right? Also, the Dash (and probably the ESP8266 too) has enough processing power to not require any other microcontroller.

[lyndon]

Overkill is in the eye of the beholder. With a BBB I could have this working in about 15 minutes. I have limited free time and that is valuable to me. How long will it take to put together all those other bits & pieces you list off?

[daleevr]

Thanks for all of the replys! Is there anywhere that offers a service to put the code together for something like this and tell me the hardware needed for the code they wrote? Paid or not! I think with all the comments that the hardware will be no problem for me but the code is a differant story!

Thanks!

[jremington]

No responsible person will write code without having the proper hardware for testing.

How much are you willing to pay for this service?

[lyndon]

Generally speaking, you can either ask any of the people responding if they would be willing to do paid work, or just put out a request for it.

The only problem is that most hobbyists (the primary population on this board) are unable to afford professional development rates, so a full end-to-end project can be rather expensive even if we offer a discounted rate for some reason. Many of us will freely post snippets of code for you to try, but it's up to you to make sure it works properly on your hardware.

[daleevr]

Computers are not new to me as I as I have built computers from the ground up on many occasions! Putting the hardware and/or code on this project will be no problem. My issues is the writting of the code and getting my start with the code. As far as paying someone, I have no clue what the charge for something like this would be. If I could find a good start somewhere I might could do this myself in time. Thanks!

[Ross Robotics]

Computers are not new to me as I as I have built computers from the ground up on many occasions!

And so have I. Computers are pretty much plug and play now. The project you're wanting, not so much..

[lyndon]

As far as paying someone, I have no clue what the charge for something like this would be.

OTS hardware: about $50 (Raspberry pi, power supply, enclosure, connectors, etc).
Wiring, enclosure machining, drawings etc: $150
Software according to the description you gave: $300 with absolutely no frills. For a "real" application, probably closer to 10x that.
Total: around $500 bargain basement price. And if I agreed to do it for that price, I'd probably end up kicking myself when I discovered it was underbid by at least 50%.

OTOH, if you hack it together yourself, it could be hacked together in a few hours for the hardware cost above. The main difference is that most people who will do professional work, won't want to do a "hack" for paying work if they don't have to. It reflects badly on their ability and often comes back to haunt them, so in the end it's cheaper to do it "right."

[daleevr]

Your right, computers are plug and play now for the most part but not when I was building computers, there was no plug and play!

[jremington]

Pick any accelerometer and there will be Arduino projects describing how to use it. Learn how that all works, then add a cellular network module for messaging. Messaging projects and code that will serve as a basis can be found by googling "arduino sms gps tracker".