Design of an Arduino shield for ota programming

Abstract

The International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE) is a research organization, created in 1987, that does research in many areas, one of them is Information and Communication Technologies. In this area there is a line specialized in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) that uses many of existent technologies or devices to gather data from the real world and sent it to CIMNE server to feed simulation systems. CIMNE participates in many research projects with other companies and institutions.

 

This project was born from the need of some research projects in ICT group of CIMNE as well as one of their associated companies. Research projects that lead to this project are relative to WSN. CIMNE used to use MicaZ sensor mote from Crossbow but its high cost

made CIMNE to look for alternatives.

 

One of the alternatives used in WSN is Arduino, a versatile board that have a microcontroller digital and analogic inputs and outputs to gather data from sensors and interact with actuators or other gadgets. Arduino is easily programmable and is open hardware. It has

not the capability of wireless communications but it has the feature of using shields, boards that connect to Arduino, to expand its functionalities.

 

Arduino is a growing technology that is used in many different fields; from domotics to professional applications to use it with educational purposes to teach students from high school to university. This grow is due to its low cost, its easiness to use and program.

Since Wireless Sensor Networks usually are deployed in remote places, such as a vineyard or a highway bridge, it is very important to be able to manage and reprogram the sensor nodes remotely. Arduino has not this feature and after doing some research on the state of the art of wireless shields and not finding any shield with this feature. CIMNE has identified the needing of designing a Wi-Fi shield with Over-The-Air (OTA) programming feature. We have done a short review of applications, some of CIMNE, that will need this feature.

 

Wi-Fi shield with OTA programming capabilities is also important to CIMNE since nowadays the Internet of Things is growing fast and with shield CIMNE can provide Internet to many objects, such as speakers.

 

To design the shield we have used Cadsoft Eagle software since is one of the best circuit design software available in the market nowadays.

 

At the end of the project we want to obtain a working Wi-Fi Arduino Shield with OTA capabilities.

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