Design Advice

[isaac]

Hi Everyone

I am written to pick up some advice from you on a project that was presented to me.
i am working a design that would be fitted in trallers . the aim of the project is to have an Lcd display in the cab of the lorry that would tell the driver the lenght & High of the trailler
on the display.
BUt it is not as simple as if sounds.
i client does not want ANY wire connection between the cab and the trailler and does not want to use wireless.
The way he wants this to work is that there would be 2 units one in the cab and the other in the trailler.
The unit in the traller would be programmed with the lenght & High etc at programme time and the data would be stored in the internal eeprom of the pic.
so all the trallers would have there data stored there so they can be used with any cab.
The data stored in the traller would need to be sent to the unit in the cab
But there is only a single wire connection between the cab & traller (Which is the reverse line when not in use)
Question How can i communicate between the pics using a single wire to sent the data
is this posible or is he asking for too much.
Personally i would go for wireless using RF modules but he dont want any cable to be touched apart from the line i talked about.
Is there a way of doing this regards

Isaac

[Melanie]

There's a thousand non-contact ways of doing this...

Why not just have a Barcode on a plate on the back of the Trailer which is scanned from inside the cab?

An iButton powered by RF tuned circuit or inductive loop?

There's lots of ways where the target (trailer) can have a device attached which can be powered by the source (cab) without the nescessity of any contact wiring.

But there's also lots of ways of reading Data from a distance without the target being powered in any shape or form anyway (ie like a Barcode, or Optical Character Recognition etc etc).

[isaac]

Thanks Mel

There's a thousand non-contact ways of doing this...

Why not just have a Barcode on a plate on the back of the Trailer which is scanned from inside the cab?).

This sounds a good idea which means the details of the trailer would on the barcode

An iButton powered by RF tuned circuit or inductive loop
(Not sure about this one i haven't a clue)

There's lots of ways where the target (trailer) can have a device attached which can be powered by the source (cab) without the nescessity of any contact wiring.
I am not quite sure what you mean here could you please expand on this mel

But there's also lots of ways of reading Data from a distance without the target being powered in any shape or form anyway (ie like a Barcode, or Optical Character Recognition etc etc

[isaac]

Would there be anyone whom can point me to a good tutorial about using
a barcode reader with the PIC (Complete Novice )

Regards
Isaac

[Archangel]

Hello Isaac,
Microchip has an eeprom with 1 wire interface ( data, ground, power) the 11LC160 avail. in SOT and PDIP. You could rig a circuit with a nicad, a to92 regulator, a couple of diodes etc to provide power, and charge off the running lights or even a solar panel.

[Luciano]

Hi,


(Click to enlarge the picture)

Best regards,

Luciano

[isaac]

Luciano

Hi Everyone

i client does not want ANY wire connection between the cab and the trailler and does not want to use wireless.
Isaac

It would be easy to do it this way but he doesnt want wireless i am going have to try and talk him round

Isaac

[Archangel]

Just send serial data in form of an serout text message to a serial backpack LCD in the cab
<img src=http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2823&d=1219187302>