Patent ID: 7242317

Claim:
A system for collecting and storing well data at from geographically spaced wells comprising: a central store adapted to receive and store data from a distant source and further comprises a computer processor that is programmed to encode data packets to and from the well monitors with an address unique to each of the well monitors and with a predefined communication path; a plurality of well monitors, each of which is adapted to be associated with a gas or oil well and each of which is programmed to record oil or gas well production data at a given oil or gas well location, each of the well monitors further having a transceiver for transmitting a wireless signal representative of the recorded oil or gas production data of the respective well with which it is associated, the well monitors are further programmed to receive wireless signals representative of data from other of said well monitors and transmit the received data to other of said well monitors and to a data transmission processor and each of the well monitors is programmed to pass on to another well monitor data packets that it receives and that have an address different than the address of the respective well monitor; the data transmission processor is adapted to be placed in a field location geographically spaced from the oil or gas wells that have at least one of said well monitors associated therewith, the data transmission processor has a receiver that is adapted to receive wireless data signals transmitted from at least one of the well monitors, has a converter to convert the received wireless data from the at least one well monitor to a communication signal and has a transmission connection to send the converted communication signal from the field location to the central data store; whereby oil or gas well production data can be transmitted to the central data store by hopping from well monitor to well monitor along the predefined path to the data transmission processor which can then, in turn, transmit the oil or gas well production data to the central store for storage and analysis.