@chbla said in Multiple uses battery RFM69 node:
Can anyone suggest a source for the parts? Are there any sources that you can upload the files by any chance?
If you mean can you upload a BOM to a company and then it generates a basket of the items, then i know that farnell and maybe digikey do this. But i only use this feature that is built into EAGLE pcb designer, so i'm not sure if they support it directly on their websites, might be worth a look.
http://www.farnell.com/
http://www.digikey.co.uk
To provide a large enough pulse to drive the ceramic transducer , you need a lot of energy, so they pump up the 5v with an inductor/transformer to provide a high voltage pulse. This is 60v or more…
The more Energy you produce the farther the pulse will travel….
Everything thing else on the board run at 3.3 to 5V.
Add a large Capacitor of 100 µF are so between the 5v and ground on the device, this may clean up your problem.. Some CPU modules just can’t supply enough current quick enough that’s needed when the pulse is triggered.
These are very inexpensive device, we’re luck to see them work at 1/2 the spec range.
I liked domoticz (was very easy to set up and use). Together with dzVents scripting wasn't that difficult either. But I also had some problem with it lately, so I was actually thinking about switching to openhab (2).
@mr_red
I have a zipped snapshot of all the 3d step/wrl models that I used to build my projects so far. It was quite some work to gather them all and align with the footprints using the kicad stepup tools. It's not complete - still needs some more work:simple_smile: but it should help you or anyone else to get started into MCAD integration using FreeCAD and kicad stepup tools. Maybe it's not very easy to start when using free tools but hey they are "FREE" so we cannot ask for more. But the nice thing is that once you get used it will be really easy to do your stuff and to go forward. Oh and FreeCAD can be so powerful after you learn it - I was really amazed what you can do with it(it has it's quirks and downsides but once you master it - oh, well...).
There's also: https://www.onshape.com/ - pretty powerful this one too and it has more advanced features than FreeCAD but the downside is that it's a cloud based solution: it's free for public documents but you never know when they will go to paid accounts only so yeah...I don't really like the idea to depend on something that it's hosted and the application is not on my PC along with the documents that I create with it. Cloud solutions have their flexibility but you're locked and you depend entirely on that hosted service.
Ok, enough talking...I uploaded the zip file here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/kzh1l9uo40cpj1u/kicad_stepup_packages.zip
@sebdetours said in MDMSPanel "Nextion":
Did you take a standart case that you cut out?
Hi @sebdetours, yes. This is G1910 (Gainta) box. See drawing attached to projet files.
Hello all,
I studied a little bit more this part of the circuit and it's a standard self oscillating flyback converter or a ringing choke converter as others call it. Indeed it provides the most compact solution for space constrained designs. But all of this comes at a cost: it's difficult to obtain a stable circuit and it has to be tuned by trial and error - at least this is what the literature says.
I'm not a switching power supplies expert here(even though I want to learn more about SMPS's in general but my time is limited for now) but I've come to a conclusion: it's difficult to tune this or to change the existing circuit to accommodate the mysensors circuits power requirements. I tried various combinations using sleep schemes and to change the flyback converter components as other mentioned in the mysensors forum and indeed I can power up my custom design that is presented in this thread BUT it's NOT STABLE. From time to time the switching transistor(mje13003) burns out and this is because I removed the resistor placed at the input of this power supply - near the bridge rectifier and replaced it with a wire(this is not the same resistor as @Lukaspp replaced from the base of the transistor which is the startup resistor for the flyback converter).
Now the only purpose that I imagine for this resistor is to suppress the transients - but it has a big value(100Kohm) which limits the current to a non-usable value for our purpose. I know that there are other solutions to overcome the transients but they are either bulky or too slow for this(correct me if I'm wrong here).
More than that let's not forget that we have 2 power supplies here and when the lights go on the first supply(flyback) input gets shorted by the relays contact(I have the relays variant btw not the one with triac) so I'm thinking that other transients appear here as the primary inductor doesn't like that as far as I know - so I assume the above mentioned resistor of 100Kohm comes into play here too. Another role for it would be to limit the inrush currents. I played with that value too but it needs to be very low to have something stable and I got a value around 200ohms but that doesn't help as it's too low and after some time the resistor burned up and saved my transistor :simple_smile: .
Now with all the tricks in the world and tuning the flyback converter to give more current this won't help as again let's not forget we have a SERIES circuit here so without external intervention we can't achieve that(only if we break somehow the laws of physics or maybe my thinking is limited :simple_smile: ). In this case the external capacitor placed across the light bulb comes into play to supply enough current to the standby circuit which is our flyback converter over here. I played with that one too and from 0,47uF I got to 4.7uF to have a decent result - but this one gets bulky and more expensive from obvious reasons. And let's not forget that the light bulb itself has some impact overall because this is the actual LOAD that we want to control and there are various light bulbs over there with various requirements. More than that they have their power supply embedded which in most of the cases is a(you guessed maybe): a self oscillating FLYBACK CONVERTER or similar. So this one too has inrush currents, transients which are sensed down the line to our dear Livolo switch and affects my custom board stability again :simple_smile: - isn't life beautiful? :simple_smile:
So far these are the results of my trials and none of them proved to be stable so I kinda gave up on this and will try to use a normal powering scheme somehow(as Sonoff switches with a battery powered touch switch on the wall). Not the best solution of all but this is what you get when the infrastructure wasn't thought for this scenarios from the beginning.
The Livolo guys thought of all of this I assume so that's why they stayed only with a simple circuit - a PIC mcu which maybe sleeps most of the time and a simple radio receiver which draws around 5mA or even less - so yeah that's why this works and it's stable in its original form.
