Though an incredibly important step, there isn’t much else to say at the moment other than I installed the RTC chip into the Colonel yesterday.

Code has been updated for both the Colonel and the app embedded in the spreadsheet allowing for a timestamp to populate the first cell on any data upload.

The downside is I’m generating a lot of garbage data, according to what I see coming across the serial monitor, as there are some “invalid characters” in approx 75% of the uploads that are preventing the data from passing on to google. I think it may be a character limit / buffering mismatch issue. (My arch nemesis, the buffer).

Aside from resolving the buffering issue, my next goal is to learn more about I2C communications, so I can have the NodeMCU request/pull data from the Uno when it is ready to receive. As it is now, the Uno is pushing data every few seconds (whether the NodeMCU is retrieving/using it or not) and I’m wondering if having that increased control of what is going into the Uno’s buffer, prior to transfer to the NodeMCU, will prevent it from filling with garbage characters.

My other motivation to switch to I2C is that each microcomputer will be able to manage significantly more sensors as each computer can handle/manage 100 inputs using this protocol… significantly more than I’d be able to connect otherwise.