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TheoL

PJON is really Cool. But not always very practical. But the whole eco system is well thought off. I was much impressed when I read about it.

TheoL

I grabbed one from the stock. And it the part you circled only has solder dots, no capacitor.

TheoL

@ben999 I've been running my NRF network for over 10 years. They all have 100uf Capacitors - maybe a bit high - but besides some range problems it is stable.

Although because of the limited range, I'm switching to rfm69 radios.

TheoL

I learned my lessons about bread boards. Slowly replacing my cheap AliExpress ones with good quality ones. I blew up 2 nano's and 1 nrf this week because of a bad breadboard

TheoL

Well it's nice that it can help people who want it. Maybe not all.

TheoL

I don't think you should have to disable the transport. Just look at the example of the Sensebener https://www.mysensors.org/hardware/micro

A simple sleep should be sufficient .... I didn't even know the transportDisable and transportReinitialise were part of the library :)

And not really sure with what you mean with sleep not working. If you remove the transportDisable, the waits and the transportReinitialise you should see a reading every 5 seconds in your controller.

TheoL

The European Union is close to adding extra taxes to orders imported from China. Some countries like the Netherlands, Belgium and France don't want to wait for that and are in the process of adding 2 euros per order line to any order that comes outside of the EU.
So e.g. if you order some smt resistors that normally costed 0,50 euro that will become 2,50 that is without transport costs and import rights. Which is ridiculous.

Now for most of the components it's not a big problem. I stopped ordering from AliExpress a long time ago - at least for critical and precise components or breakouts. Since most you get from there is B quality, meaning it didn't pass the quality tests from the manufacturer.

TME for example is a good alternative to LCSC Electronics. Fast delivery not that much more expensive, but also good service and good quality. With more expensive I mean that the total costs including transport costs aren't that much higher then ordering from China. Especially with the new taxes.

I'm looking for an alternative for PCBs. But so far I haven't found one European based that is also affordable. I found one that asks 40 euros instead of the 3 euros a PCB costs when you buy from PCBWay or JLCPCB e.g.

So if you have some good alternatives, then I'm all ears.

TheoL

@OldSurferDude What is the distance between your Gateway and the backyard Node?

Also I'm experimenting with radio ranges. I wasn't really happy with the NRF range even when using a PA / LNA. The max I can get is a bit over 20 meters. That is without repeaters.

I've created an RFM69 gateway with a Nano and added it as a second gateway to Domoticz. On that gateway I soldered a DIY antenna - not a long range - and that one has a range of over 70 meters. Measured with the GW inside an my battery powered test node was outside.

For my test I just created a simple node that echo's the state of a binary sensor that I toggle each 5 seconds. I have two leds when for the sending and one for the receiving, so I could see where the border of my range is.

So for my outside nodes I'm in the progress of replacing all the NRFs with RFM radios.

Also when you change the caps to 100uf you should have a longer range and a more reliable network. But adding repeaters does help in extending the range.

TheoL

@skywatch When I have time I will give you a library. I like code the best when there's no wait or delay in it.

Giving a library means I have to take it out of my code and make it decent xd

TheoL

I use a message queue, I implemented a long time ago. But all of this shouldn't be needed, as there's a retry built into the MySensors Core.
I do it to give other Nodes the time to send as well. Because sometimes the traffic is really bursty

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