Week 14 - Integration test II

We managed to get the design working at first, however it comes with a big problem. The data received by the chase vehicle is in chunks of 5-7 rows of data at a time, and once every minute or so. After spending some time of trial & errors and testing, we thought that the 9600 baud rate of the LoRa may be the cause, hence we re-setted the settings to higher baud rate transmission through air. 

After further testings, we still found the rate to be similar. When we sent the data manually through the RX software of LoRa at different speeds, we discovered little or no delays, even at a large amount of data (Tested up to 10 columns). However, if we were to send at a faster rate (< 1s), the system starts to get sluggish and may even hang, which is how we found the fault in the system.

We were handed Arduino Micro (uses Leonardo bootloader), and we use them instead of Arduino pro mini, as Micro eliminates the use of a FTDI serial adapter module, hence saving space. In addition, as the bootloader is a Leonardo, and the flaw of Leonardo is that it is unable to initiate serial.communication within setup() on its own as it uses a software USB instead of a hardware USB-to-Serial adapter. This is a problem as the PLX.DAQ requires a serial.print of some text to name the columns of data. By adding a line of code, the problem can be solved partially, whereby the Arduino will be able to Serial.print what's in the setup() once ONLY, and will not print again after the re-opening of the Serial.Monitor, or re-connecting of PLX-DAQ. To print what's in the setup() again, the user has to re-upload the same code. An example of the code can be seen below in bold:
Example
void setup()
{
while (!Serial) ; 
Serial.println("CLEARDATA");

Serial.println("LABEL, Current time, Reading 1, Reading 2");
}