Long range radio motion/tilt sensor advice

[cdolan]

Hello,

I've been researching and looking for a sensor to fit a somewhat unique use case. My objective is to know when a dumpster is picked up. See this youtube video for the type of motion I wish to record.

There are a couple designs that I think would work best for my use case, however I have not yet found a sensor for sale that has the following features:

• Small footprint (ideally the size of a deck of cards or smaller)
• 300-500 ft radio communication to a base station
• Base station with AC power and ethernet connection
• Over the Air updates (including settings) to base station and sensor
• 6+ month sensor life
• Ability to monitor the movement of the bin, using the most accurate and lowest power-consumption option available.
• A base station should be able to manage at least 5 sensors at a time. The more the better.

Currently I've been using WirelessTags. They are nearly perfect, except that a magnometer is used to detect movement, and I'm almost positive that the large metal bins are making this data unreliable.

I'm relatively new to the arduino space, although I do understand the basic premise of shields, etc. If anyone has advice on how feasible my project is using Arduino components, it would be appreciated. If arduino is not the proper tech to accomplish this, and you know of a product that would better suit me, I would love some recommendations.

Thank you for any assistance!

[hek]

You could use either a 3D gyro/accelerometer
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ADXL345-3-Axis-Digital-Acceleration-of-Gravity-Tilt-Module-AVR-ARM-MCU-Arduino-/191538893715?hash=item2c989b9393

or a simple tilt sensor perhaps?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tilt-Sensor-Module-Vibration-Sensor-Module-for-Arduino-STM32-AVR-Raspberry-pi-/351462009322?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item51d4c4a9ea

[cdolan]

@hek Thank you for those suggestions. Do you know if there is pre-existing software written to have a base station control a sensor? The big headache I'm worried about is once I have the right components, I need to find a way to reliably work on them without being on-site.

[hek]

There are multiple controller options available on http://www.mysensors.org. Not sure I understand what you mean by control sensor. You only need to act on the sensor output right?