Design Of Hardware And Sotfware For Terminal Nodes Of Wireless Gas Meter System Based On Set-top Box

With the development of science and technology, people’s life has been significantlyimproved. The gas meter, which is closely related to people’s life, is drawing more and moreattention. Traditional manual meter reading and IC card meter reading can not meet the needsof the community. As a result, Wireless gas meter has been more and more popular, and it isalso the new technology that the gas company advocates.The set-top box, which is the product of the new era, has spread into residents’ life.People are not satisfied with the traditional local programs, and they have adopted set-top boxto receive digital TV programs. In order to meet people’s growing need, the set-top boxeshave more and more functions, and they can provide more interfaces. Due to the favor indigital TV programs, the set-top box grows rapidly. So it makes contributions to the devices’growing, which are related to the set-top box, and they have a good prospect.Based on the popular fields of set-top box and wireless gas meter, a new wireless gasmeter system is presented in this paper, which combined set-top box with the gas meter.Although the concept of wireless gas meter is not a new concept, combined it with the set-topbox is really a new concept in China. And this new concept also presents the idea of smarthome. This paper is based on the project of “home security, meter reading and energy analysissystem application development and demonstration projects of the cable television network”.In addition, the project, which will be finished by the end of2013, is applying for the Internetof things industry demonstration project in Jilin Province Key Project. This paper is just thekey part in the initial phase of the project.The new wireless gas meter system, which is based on the set-top box, contains thefollowing part: gas meter nodes, coordinate node, set-top box, data server, and the gascompany’s operating platform. The terminal nodes contain gas meter nodes and coordinatenodes. The working principle can be summarized as follows: the gas meter node is connectedto the wireless gas meter, and the coordinate node is connected to the set-top box. The gasmeter node collects the gas flow value, valve status, battery power and other information. Andit sends these information to the coordinate node by means of wireless in period. Oncereceiving these information, the coordinate nodes make some treatments, and then transferthem to the set-top box through the serial port. The set-top boxes encapsulate theseinformation and transfer them to the data server through cable television network. And thenthe data server transfers them to the gas company’s operating platform by Internet. If GasCompany wants to control or read the gas meter, it just need to go in the reverse process which is mentioned above. A terminal node not only contains the information collection andtransmission, but also contains the handling of abnormal events to ensure the interests of usersand gas company.The main work in this paper can be concluded as follows: design of hardware andsoftware for terminal nodes of the system, and organization of the terminal nodes. We designthe hardware circuit of terminal nodes by ourselves, and complete the software design ofrelevant parts. Based on the TI-MAC protocol stack, we make some changes, and canorganize terminal nodes in star network. A detailed design of hardware and software forterminal is given in this paper. A detailed description of the changed TI-MAC protocol stackand the process of the network are also given in this paper. We make a detailed analysis ofcommunication and network process of the terminal nodes through the wireless networkmonitoring software, and we also make some necessary tests to verify it.