General advice

[bjornhallberg]

@shawn_ky One the one hand, doing through-hole components and stuff will work even on the cheapest iron so I guess it depends on your budget. I've made do with a cheap rebranded Velleman iron for some time until I decided to get the Xytronic LF-3000 90W soldering station the other week. A discontinued (?) model sold by the Distrelec Group here in Europe (Reichelt / Elfa / etc ...). Seemed like good value, but as always, second hand is probably the way to go if you can find any. I looked around but realized that many of the used stations were another step up in terms of price/quality still so I just gave up on that.

Don't know how good the value is for some of these Ebay stations. Some people love them. Some claim they overshoot and misrepresent the temperature. Probably not worth importing since they're pretty heavy, better to find locally.

[shawn_ky]

Thanks for the advice @Nuubi and @bjornhallberg ! As far as budget, I don't really know. I guess I know I've tried with the cheap ones before (many years ago now) and it always seemed like if you weren't experienced already then it was a bit more difficult. Perhaps looking for a used Weller is the route to go... I'll look for the one @bjornhallberg mentioned also just in case. Never know, maybe Amazon will have a good deal!

[soward]

I have a weller non-adjustable unit that I used for years, and I recently moved it to the garage and obtained an adjustable temp hakko 888D, it heats up a little quicker than the weller (okay maybe 1/4 the time) and the holder is a bit nicer, but otherwise they both work well and have a variety of swappable tips. Of course, now I'm thinking I might should have gotten something with hot-air rework capabilities, though really I'm probably not steady enough to do too much SMD fiddling.

Seems wise to go with the E-Net gateway straight away, I ran with the serial for several month but E-net has lots of advantages. I had some difficulties with the ENC board locking up. I've been using a UNO w/ 5100 as you have listed for a few days w/o issue.

I recently bought a new vera for our office which came with UI7 instead of UI5, not sure what issues that might present.

does the _ky indicate that you are in Kentucky?

[shawn_ky]

@soward Yes, I am in Kentucky.... Located in a tri-state area with Ohio and West Virginia close by.

The hakko 888D looks interesting. Suddenly it appears there are a lot of choices. My assumption is to make sure that it's adjustable and things will work out ok.

I definitely wanted to go the Ethernet gateway model as it just made more sense to me. Probably moreso in my comfort zone. Glad to hear it's working okay for you...

I also have UI7 which I have seen good and bad with so far. I have a few X10 devices and would really like to be able to use them through Vera, but at this time the MochaD plugin isn't working properly with UI7. As far as this library, it looks like it is working ok.

[marceltrapman]

@soward said:

though really I'm probably not steady enough to do too much SMD fiddling.

That is what I thought too. It is really not that difficult though...

[hek]

I'm about to go crazy over my cheap soldering iron. The tip losen itself and the handle is crap. Guess sometimes you get what you pay for (≈40USD).

After googling a while I was thinking of buying a Weller WSD 81. Quite expensive but hopefully it will last for a while.
http://uk.farnell.com/weller/wsd-81-uk/soldering-station-80w-230v-uk/dp/1877455

Anyone knows how it compares to the hakko 888D?

[shawn_ky]

@hek That's a great question and one that I was wondering also.... :smile:

[soward]

I'm not sure about that exact model, but the one things the Weller digital units had over the hakkos when I was shopping was auto-power-off, so if that's a concern it might be worthwhile. However, they were quite a bit more $ here in the US anyway. The Hakko 888D can be had for ~$90US if you are patient. I don't remember the 81 even coming up in a search, the lower powered 51 I looked at, but it was in the $140US range with both less power than the Hakko and the non-adjustable WTCPT I have (temp is adjusted by the particular tip that is installed).

That said, the WTCPT is > 15 years old and still working fine, so I don't think you can go wrong with either.

Also, I think the 240V hakko might be more costly than it's 120V cousin, which might level the playing field outside of NA.

[hek]

Santa came early this year. Finally decided on a WD1000. Hope it will last i lifetime.

[shawn_ky]

Looks like you were a very good boy this year! :smiley: I finally received enough of my stuff to begin playing a bit. So far, it's great! Haven't finished the gateway yet but I've had some questions. How does one use a resistor or capacitor on a breadboard? Is there a proper way to connect it? Also the Ethernet module I order from the hardware list came in but was labeled differently than the instructions for the gateway... I'm on my phone now but will post an image shortly of the labeling. I just want to make sure it's hooked up right before I get too far.

Here are the pics...

[hek]

You might wanna browse through these threads.

http://forum.mysensors.org/topic/467/ethernet-gateway-troubleshooting-advice
http://forum.mysensors.org/topic/466/ethernet-gateway-problem/3

SoftSPI for NRF24L01 radio seems to be the option to get Ethernet working on the same SPI bus.

A question for everyone: Is there any Ethernet module working side-by-side with radio without tweaking SPI behavior? The ENC-module requires too much memory and the WizNet has problems hogging SPI.

[jocke4u]

@hek said:

A question for everyone: Is there any Ethernet module working side-by-side with radio without tweaking SPI behavior? The ENC-module requires too much memory and the WizNet has problems hogging SPI.

I bought SunFounder Uno + Ethernet shield and worked out of box
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sunfounder-UNO-R3-Ethernet-Schild-W5100-Starter-Kit-fur-Arduino-Mega-2560-Nano-/161382223691?pt=Wissenschaftliche_Geräte&hash=item2593214f4b

[soward]

@jocke4u said:

@hek said:

A question for everyone: Is there any Ethernet module working side-by-side with radio without tweaking SPI behavior? The ENC-module requires too much memory and the WizNet has problems hogging SPI.

I bought SunFounder Uno + Ethernet shield and worked out of box
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sunfounder-UNO-R3-Ethernet-Schild-W5100-Starter-Kit-fur-Arduino-Mega-2560-Nano-/161382223691?pt=Wissenschaftliche_Geräte&hash=item2593214f4b

I got the enc working, but it would hang after some number of hours (usually around 12, but +/- 8). It did not seem to be based on the volume of traffic flowing through it though, so I dunno if it was a similar SPI conflict or a bug in the IP stack.

I ordered the iTead, but it has yet to arrive, instead I ordered the same Sunfounder unit mentioned above, but from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JB2Z74W/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I built it up and added a 16x4 LCD and some code to display the time and the last 3 communications received by the controller. It's been stable and online 24x7 since sunday night. No SPI modifications.

[daulagari]

A question for everyone: Is there any Ethernet module working side-by-side with radio without tweaking SPI behavior? The ENC-module requires too much memory and the WizNet has problems hogging SPI.

WIZnet has apart from the W5100 also a W5500 that has Hardware TCP/IP Protocol Handling, 8 TCP/UDP Sockets and a 32KB RAM Buffer and AFAIK the SPI problems solved. According to showwiznet the W5500 is also considerably cheaper than the W5100.

With it being cheaper it is weird I can not find boards with a W5500 on ebay. I ended up buying a WIZ5500io module via Antratek.nl. Will give it a try next weekend.

[hek]

@daulagari said:

I ended up buying a WIZ5500io module

Great. Report back your findings.

[bjornhallberg]

@daulagari There are some on AliExpress. A bit cheaper than Antratek but not much. Not 100% sure you get the Uno shield adapter but it seems so. Still no big deal with the price since we only need one gateway.