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FarWatchWatchers

The basic concept

(Page's URL: FarWWatcherOverview.htm)


First... something to watch!

You probably haven't heard of a "FarWatchWatcher". A FarWatchWatcher is just a computer application. It isn't hard to imagine that it will watch something. We'll start by talking about that "something" for a moment...

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is a URL you can go to with your web browser which presents some data. For the wants of a simple FarWatchWatcher, in an unchanging format.

That is the sort of "something" FarWatchWatchers are made to watch!

(Arduservers... about $20... can be put on the web. They would fit the bill. The data could be, say, the temperature and humidity in the neighborhood of the Arduserver.)

In normal usage, an Arduserver is connected to the internet, i.e. to "the WAN".

An Arduserver can provide one of the elements of a FarWatch system. FarWatch systems let you watch what's happening somewhere, from afar.

Not "watch" as in a video feed. But "watch" by means of collecting numbers from sensors.

If you have, say, an Arduserver at the place you want to watch, all you is a web browser to do the watching. The Arduserver (or any other device with similar capabilities) serves a page with What You Want To Know on it.

I made a new Arduserver in February 2023, trying to learn from the experiences I've had making many others in the past. I wrote that up thoroughly, and sourcecode comes with the essay on my Feb. 2023 Arduserver.

Enter the FarWatchWATCHER

If you have an Arduserver, or similar, you can, as I said, just watch it with a browser.

But with a little effort, you can get technology to help.

A FarWatchWatcher is a program that runs in an "always on" device somewhere far from the Arduserver... someplace near where you are.

The FarWatchWatcher accesses the page served as often as you think necessary. It records the data it sees in a data file. It displays the current and historical data on graphs. Some even "ring alarm bells" (well, make the computer beep!) if "problems" are detected.

"Problems": Say that the Arduserver is watching a vacation home? In a place where a failed heating system can mean burst pipes. How about a FarWatchWatcher that would go beep/ beep/ beep... it the temperature in the vacation home started to fall?

In such systems, it is easy enough, and normal, to have the FarWatchWatcher raise an alarm of the Arduserver (or other IoT device) stops responding to requests for the pages it should be serving.

This page is just an introduction

I have quite a few pages relating to FarWatchWatchers, and Arduservers and other sources of FarWatchWatcher-friendly data.(I will try to put some links here for you. In the meantime there's Google search! This page is primarily a place people already on one of those pages can come, for an overview of what "it" does.)

Create your own data source

The FarWatchWatchers aren't proud. They will watch any FarWatch data source. But the Watchers are a bit fussy.

They need to be able to find the data they are meant to harvest in a specific place, and in one of a limited number of specific formats.

But it isn't hard to set a web page up to provide what the Watcher needs.

Several different formats are acceptable. For instance, if a particular Arduserver only reports the temperature and humidity around it, a data line in the HTML might look like...

<!--003241,+019.32,45.8-->

That, as you will know if you know HTML is a comment line. The webserver sends it to the browser. It is present "inside" the browser. But, normally, someone looking at the page "the old fashioned" way, using a browser and the Mark I eyeball will not see the comment line. But if you ask the browser to show you the page's source, you will see it.

The best FarWatch data sources put a line declaring the format the data will be presented in, just before the line with the data. But that's not "necessary".

If you want someone looking at the page the "old fashioned way", there's nothing to stop you having another line in the page served that says something like...

At the moment, the Arduserver has done 3,241 cycles since booting,
the temperature at the sensor is 19.32 degrees Celsius,
and the relative humidity is at 45.8 percent

So... If you know about creating web pages, you can make your own Arduserver, if you like. If you insert a data line in one of the formats that already have FarWatchWatchers built for them, help yourself. I have some free FarWatchWatchers. Or get in touch to discuss your needs.

A few words from the sponsors...

Please get in touch if you discover flaws in this page. Please mention the page's URL. (wywtk.com/fw/FarWWatcherOverview.htm).

If you found this of interest, please mention in forums, give it a Facebook "like", Google "Plus", or whatever. If you want more of this stuff, help!? There's not much point in me writing these things, if no one feels they are of any use.



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