It Started With a Hardware Limitation I have been using Quectel GNSS modules in my designs for a while. They are reliable, well-documented, and the support ecosystem is solid. But the module I had been using had one problem that I kept running into: no external antenna support . For most projects that is a minor inconvenience. For a marine vessel monitoring and control system , it is a non-starter. A vessel hull blocks sky view, antenna placement is critical, and the difference between a clean fix and no fix at all often comes down to whether you can mount the antenna where it actually has line of sight. An integrated antenna in a sealed enclosure below deck simply does not cut it. So I went directly to Quectel. The Conversation With Quectel I reached out through their official sample request channel. I was not expecting much — most component manufacturers have a standard process: fill out a form, wait, get a few uni...
This experiment was bit delayed due to lack of libraries for RS485 for Arduino. After lots of frustrations, i manage to make it work with soft-serial. Master controller send the command in bytes with [slaveid,status,level] and when a specific id slave response to it and lit and LED. Level byte is an analog value sent by master to dim the LED.
RS485 is a long distance communication protocol which is used is several industrial applications so it can be used to monitor and control devices in a twisted pair network.
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