I have published all the documentation in a Github repository. If someone wants to make PCBs, I recommend that you wait a little longer until you receive my PCBs and try them.
@yury said in Wall Socket Insertable Node:
Looks cool! Do you have experience with capacities switches? I did not play much with them. afraid to use close to AC interference though...
You need to use a capacitive IC with active shielding, basically you have an extra electrode around your touch electrode and the touch IC will compare capacitive change of the touch electrode with capacitive change from the shield electrode. If the change is due to electrical interference then both electrodes will be changed in a similar way and the IC will not trigger.
If you look at the Netatmo devices you can see that they have plastic caps and a long plastic notch. I'd bet that the antenna can be found in such an area...
I dont think that a small thickness will help to let the radio signal pass. Think of that very thin µ-metal sheet covers on high frequency circuits e.g. in TV or Radio inputs (where you want to stop a radio transmission). They are built to not let radio waves pass and they are thin - so I dont think the thickness plays a major role. As Bulldog wrote paramagnetic blocks radio waves. And aluminum stays paramagnetic even if you reduce the thickness.
But I made the experience that relatively small areas, where the radio waves will not get blocked (e.g. plastic caps) can make the difference between no signal and "its working". Also keep in mind that nearly all antennas have a direction. So changing the orienation of the antenna might dramatically change the transmitting capabilties.
I'm very interested by your setup. It has been a shame to have some low voltage power in order to measure power consumption
I hope you can display something soon.
Regards,
Qq.
@TheoL Not only did I put in delays, too, but I put in delays that were based upon the ID (which was stored in NVRAM)! This helped.
caveat: This is probably not accurate be helps to explain the challenges with a large network.
My initial experience with Arduino/nRF24 was using the libraries from TMRh20. Those libraries allowed a node to be a repeater, but only for 6 nodes. The primary node 0, master, only allowed 6 nodes to connect to it. The nodes connected to it also allowed 6 nodes. Subsequent nodes had to go through one of these repeating nodes. But the depth was only 4 deep. The master assigned node IDs if the node didn't already have one; similar to a MAC address.
The master also kept track of the addresses (ARP table?). Addresses were 4 octets (base in the form of D/C/B/A. A node connected directly to the master had an address of 0/0/0/a (where 0/0/0/0 was reserved for the master). A node connected through another node had an address of 0/0/b/a, and so forth.
But what happens is that a parent node has to mange the data from all its child nodes and their child nodes and their child nodes. Thus a node would get so bogged down dealing with this traffic that it din't do its sensor task very well.
It is my belief that MySensors either uses TMRh20's libraries or has developed some aspects based on his initial work. I see that that TMRh20 has a version 2 and I have not experimented with it. I did find that MySensors worked better than version 1.
Thus, my curiosity.
I am also duly impressed at the magnitude of hardware. Currently a nano like device from Aliexperss is US$2-3, nRF24 ~ US$1, power supply ~ US$1.50, power cord ?, case?, sensors!? While the hardware cost is daunting, even with a PCB it's a lot of work building those up. So, yeah, I'm impressed!
-OSD
