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Jeff,

One thing to consider is that you can never rely on the Internet to be in "real time."

I run site uptime monitoring software 24/7 and there are often times when sites don't even respond for 10-15 minutes, sometimes even longer. I have had sites go offline for hours too. And I am only monitoring three sites.

James

Good point.
I don't need second by second real time, a few minutes lag is ok. I will need to take that into consideration before I invest any time making this idea into an actual program.

Feed a text file with the info that you want, sec by sec ( maybe each 5 sec for better performance ) with the new info in the top
Each time that you send the information to your server you clean the text file from the last sended line to the end

Sample:

08:10:35, 85, 90
08:10:30, 86, 91
08:10:25, 82, 93

When you send the information of these 3 lines you remove them from the text file, with this you will always have the information that you need in the local log or online.

You can split in little files too:
Folder YYYYMMDD

Files HHMM - file with info about this Hour/Minute if each 5sec, 12 records/lines

Hi Jeff,
interesting project...

Jeff Barnes wrote:Good point.
I don't need second by second real time, a few minutes lag is ok. I will need to take that into consideration before I invest any time making this idea into an actual program.

The reliability of your server and internet connection is something you can contract under a SLA as required. My own experience is not as bad as James's, i don't remeber when was the last time our server where down.

(James, if you've had several down in the service probably you should consider to change provider, )

Check http://lowendbox.com/, most of them will include the uptime in their service specs.

For data reception, I problably build a pseudo data-server, where devices connects via the internet sending records, protected under SSL and additional id check. Internet gives you the advantage of being available in every single device, with several options for device connectivity like GSM, Wifi, etc..
A PHP Lamp stack should be enough, taking advantage of supporting for several simultaneous connections.

What's the spected incomming data rate? How many clients will be connected at once? Daily data volume?

Carlos,

(James, if you've had several down in the service probably you should consider to change provider, )

They are on the servers of three different providers. I also found similar results on other sites like Microsoft, Go Daddy, and serveral others.

James

Use sockets.