I have little experience with wireless design.
I want to remote launch a weather balloon when conditions are right. I considered programming in all the data from the various sensors and just have it auto-launch... but the expense of the equipment on the balloon has me thinking I would rather get the data and then manually send the command to release, just in case I have a bug in the code (ie. it will alert me when it thinks it should launch, and I give it the OK).
The problem is where it is stationed. It isn't particularly far away, but it is difficult terrain and the weather conditions I'm trying to capture don't make a hike out to it a welcoming proposition. So wireless is the way to go. But what flavor?
It is way too far to pick up my house's wifi (I lost that just going about 30 feet from the building).
Should I extend wifi with an outdoor directional WAP?
Zigbee?
Cellular?
Would an off-the-shelf r/c setup work at that distance with a patch antenna on my end?
Cellular seems overkill because I have line of sight and we're only talking about 1.5km, but then 1.5km might be pushing it for other methods?
My two primary considerations are cost and power consumption. On the remote end, it would have to be run by battery and I would want it to operate on the order of months, if not years. I certainly don't want to go up there every 2 days to swap batteries.
Thanks.
I want to remote launch a weather balloon when conditions are right. I considered programming in all the data from the various sensors and just have it auto-launch... but the expense of the equipment on the balloon has me thinking I would rather get the data and then manually send the command to release, just in case I have a bug in the code (ie. it will alert me when it thinks it should launch, and I give it the OK).
The problem is where it is stationed. It isn't particularly far away, but it is difficult terrain and the weather conditions I'm trying to capture don't make a hike out to it a welcoming proposition. So wireless is the way to go. But what flavor?
It is way too far to pick up my house's wifi (I lost that just going about 30 feet from the building).
Should I extend wifi with an outdoor directional WAP?
Zigbee?
Cellular?
Would an off-the-shelf r/c setup work at that distance with a patch antenna on my end?
Cellular seems overkill because I have line of sight and we're only talking about 1.5km, but then 1.5km might be pushing it for other methods?
My two primary considerations are cost and power consumption. On the remote end, it would have to be run by battery and I would want it to operate on the order of months, if not years. I certainly don't want to go up there every 2 days to swap batteries.
Thanks.