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vlast3k edited this page Nov 12, 2015 · 10 revisions

This Wiki-space will incrementally include more and more information about the CO2Monitor.

1. Driver Installation

Drivers are required to connect the CO2Monitor to your computer and either manage it via Serial Port or upgrade its firmware. The device drivers that you may need to install if you do not have them yet are for the USB2Serial chipset CH340G. This is a very popular chipset that can be found in almost any device with usb communication coming from China. You can download the drivers for:

2. Find COM Port

To find out on which COM Port the device has installed, on Windows open Device manager and browse to "Ports".

Note: If you change the USB port, also the COM Port will change

For Mac - i will post some pictures soon. Until then - here is some documentation that i found http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12254378/how-to-find-the-serial-port-number-on-mac-os-x

3. Firmware upgrade

During Firmware upgrade, your previous settings and calibration are not overwritten To upload a new firmware:

  1. Download the XLoader tool from here https://github.com/vlast3k/simple-co2-monitor-fw/blob/master/files/XLoader.zip
  2. Download the latest firmware from here: https://github.com/vlast3k/simple-co2-monitor-fw/tree/master/fw, and unzip it
  3. Configure the tool like this:

  1. Press upload, and in ~15 seconds the new firmware is flashed

4. Configuration

The initial version of the CO2Monitor will be configured only via Serial Port (and in the future the Non-Wifi versions as well). As of now - the only way to connect to the device is using some Serial Communication tool. This either Putty, or the Arduino IDE. For both tools - the Baud Rate should be 9600. For Arduino IDE - you can find the Serial Monitor under: Tools -> Serial Monitor. Once you connect to the device- it will restart and display the following text Starting... EEPROM Version: 3 Simple CO2 Monitor. Press any key to display menu Now you can enter any key to open the menu. It may take up to few seconds until the device finishes doing what it does and a menu will be displayed: (1) Set LED Tresholds (2) Configure WIFI (d) Enable display debugging info (r) Factory Reset (no prompt!) Select Option or (q)uit:

Enter any option by entering the key and then Enter.

  1. Set LED Thresholds - this was a requested feature - to be able to set at which condition the LEDs will light. It is entered as a string of 5 numbers - e.g: 700 1000 1300 1600 1900

  2. Configure Wifi - see below

d. Enable display Debugging info - some debugging info will be printed in the Serial Monitor and on the OLED (if available). This should help debugging if necessary

r. Factory Reset - it will reset the device to it's factory settings and restart it. There is no prompt - so beware!

Wifi Configuration:

(1) Set SSID (2) Set Password (3) Connect (4) Set ThingSpeak API Key

1 and 2 - enter SSID and Password of your network one after the other. SSID is case sensitive. Then press 3. to connect to the network. It will validate ssid/pass. 4. Set ThingSpeak API Key - In the future there could be more options to log data, but as of now - there is only ThingSpeak. This is one of the most popular free platform to collect and chart IoT data. To use it - you need to create an account there. Then create a New Channel. E.g. like this:

And get it's Write API Key from here:

When you enter the API Key, the device will try to send one data entry (456 ppm), to verify that everything is fine