Question Recommendations to find someone to develop hardware/software interface for a specific commercial product

[CharlieChapman]

Basically, I talked out my butt a bit to my boss. I know very little about software or hardware development, but understand enough to know what is or isn't possible.

We work in the agricultural sector and there is a company that provides hardware and software that monitors grain bins. Basically, big cables are strung up from the top of those big metal bins you see that store grain. They dangle from the ceiling (sometimes single cables, sometimes multiple cables), and monitor the grains temperature, moisture level, and if necessary, turn on a fan to bring the conditions in the bin back to an ideal level.

I'm looking for a forum, or freelance forum, that I can explain the project in depth to - the hardware requirements (for example, the Pi reads that the temperature is okay - green led is on constantly, temperature not okay, red led light is on constantly). It seems simple in practice, just I have not the skills to do it.

Is there a Discord, or Reddit forum, that would help point me in the right direction?

TLDR: Want to build a Pi or Arduino board that interfaces with temperature and moisture cables (somes times 1 cable, some times multiple), and runs a program that can be programmed for a specific temperature/moisture range, and keeps an LED light on indicating OK or Not OK, but I have no idea where to start finding or talking to someone about the extent of this.

 

[OldSurferDude]

Yup! You talked yourself into a hole. Sounds like a fun project. Create your own discord forum. Invite people here to join you. Obviously you're getting compensated for this. Are the people that join in your forum going to get compensated?

 

[OldSurferDude]

My wife and I she's also an engineer, got to talking about your project. The hardware or computer and sensors will need to be robust. By that we mean you're putting this equipment into a very harsh environment Dusty humid warm. This is stuff to All electronics. In addition you will have to have your sensors be food grade because of the grain silo location. When you do get a failure, and that's definitely when, I could envision a sensor just breaking off it's stainless steel support and falling into the middle of the grain. So you have a lot of considerations here very few of them have to do with the actual logic of making this work

 

[USAFRet]

TLDR: Want to build a Pi or Arduino board that interfaces with temperature and moisture cables (somes times 1 cable, some times multiple), and runs a program that can be programmed for a specific temperature/moisture range, and keeps an LED light on indicating OK or Not OK, but I have no idea where to start finding or talking to someone about the extent of this.

I have a hard time thinking there is not an off the shelf solution for this.
All you seem to be adding is the LED portion.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I have a hard time thinking there is not an off the shelf solution for this.
All you seem to be adding is the LED portion.

It depends on the customer's requirements.

It's like why some people choose to build their own NAS box with TrueNAS rather than get a Synology or QNAP one.

 

[gggplaya]

This sounds like an easy project. For me at least, the code is simple, but if this is a commercial project, why limit it to an LED?? Why not have an LCD with moisture and temperature readout? It's dead nuts simple on an Arduino or PI.

You shouldn't have talked out your rear end, you are unqualified for the job if you can't even program something this simple. You cheated out a qualified engineer from this job.

There are websites for engineers looking to do side hustles that are well qualified for such an easy project who work in poor countries. Several hundred dollars to them is a months salary normally. Websites such as Fiverr. I could code this in less than 2 hours. What you need to do is create specifications with the I/O that the engineer will need to code into the arduino or pi. They'll need to know which pins go where and accompanying circuits used for the sensors.