Sensebender Micro
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Well, it's a temperature sensor, and humidity in one :). If you are going to use other sensor types (DS1820, or cheaper humidity/temperature sensors), you also need to have a booster circuit, in order to boost battery voltage to 3V minimum (as they don't operate on voltages lower than that).
So in the end, you'll buy both booster circuits, and sensors, which will be close to the same price as the Si7021 in the end, to get the same functionality.
And since you (probably) are using a cheap booster circuit from ebay, the battery would not last that long, so you buy lot's of batteries to feed the booster circuitry :)
But when that's said, we could ask itead if they could make a "barebone" unit, without the Si7021 mounted, and then provide a quote on that type of sensor.
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Thank you for your answer tbowmo - i see your logic.
But if you want to use it with say, light, motion or another sensor with this board - do I need a booster? -
Well, the atsha204 is only about 0.5$ in price, so the savings will be very little.
@sundberg84
If it's a pure motion sensor then I can see a point in using a light edition. I have requested a quote from itead on a light edition. -
@tbowmo It was just a thought I came up with and thought to share my idea and arguments. :)
I think the Sensebender Micro is great especially if you would like to monitor temperatures (which of course many of us wants to), but I just think that a less expensive, light option (that would be available to order... :) ) could appeal to many. Great that you have requested a quote! -
Just as a reference, the boost regulators I did, based on the TPS61221, cost something like $1.7, including the (very small) PCB. The TPS61221 is about $1 out of that cost. And I did not use the cheapest inductor exactly. Plus the cost of small volumes and ordering each component individually from AliExpress.
Don't have any testing equipment, and I haven't done any long term tests, but the prototype I did was perfectly able to run a mysensors node, including the motion detector module, and a small buzzer, on just one AA battery.
Not to say that I also wouldn't like pads for the Si7021 at least. It's a damn fine chip, hence the cost.
I think that in the long run, we should think about some sort of mini shield system where a base board can be extended, so (almost) everyone can get what they want. At the expense of bulkier designs, but it would be a choice for the end-user and everything comes at a cost anyway.
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Got mine yesterday (Switzerland)!
I really like the design of the board. Only improvement I wish: integrated NRF24L01+ :-)
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Well, the atsha204 is only about 0.5$ in price, so the savings will be very little.
@sundberg84
If it's a pure motion sensor then I can see a point in using a light edition. I have requested a quote from itead on a light edition. -
@gloob
same here. Has left on 04.06.2015 - no more info. Also on local post service (link below on hk post) no entry.
As I live in Germany and the post is on strike and our customs work with "german gründlichkeit" I dont expect it to arrive too fast... -
@tbowmo, ah, sorry misunderstanding then. I thought it was the atsha204 that was contributing 30% of the cost, but I guess it's the Si7021, which is rather useful to have!
@hawk_2050 said:
@tbowmo, ah, sorry misunderstanding then. I thought it was the atsha204 that was contributing 30% of the cost, but I guess it's the Si7021, which is rather useful to have!
Yup it's the Si7021.. It's about 5$ in low quantities from Mouser (Think that itead has a better source thouǵh)
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I received mine today. I would be interested in a lower cost version as well that doesn't include the temp & humidity sensor.
Cheers
Al -
Hello,
Can some one measure the real power consumption of the sensebender with the default sketch (humidity, temperature, battery level) running and the nrf24l01 module?
Would like to get an idea of home many µA are used in active mode and how many µA in sleep mode the sensebender is taking.
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Still waiting here on the East Coast...
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My order arrived in the US midwest today (shipped from HK on June 3). I hooked one up to a CR123 to test and it worked right out of the box. I do not know much about battery operation and have a question about the battery monitoring - Do I need to alter the sketch for the CR123 vs the original 2 x AA? Or a 3V coincell?
