Sensebender Micro
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Picked up my four devices yesterday and two of them are up and running using the pre-loaded sketch and it works like a charm!
But i have a question regarding the battery level reporting, I can see the following in the code:
// Battery voltage is repported as child sensorId 199, as well as battery percentage (Internal message)But it seems to only present temp and hum as sensors and no voltage:
gw.present(CHILD_ID_TEMP,S_TEMP); gw.present(CHILD_ID_HUM,S_HUM);What is it i'm failing to understand? I just setup Domoticz and in there I have not yet got a good way of presenting historical battery levels, it just shows the latest internal battery level message. To get a better understanding on the battery life performance it is necessary to be able to create a graph. I thought I could use the voltage level for this but I can only see the internal message :-(
Thanks,
Henrik -
That's a leftover from my initial battery monitoring code. It could be re-implemented quite easily, in the battery reporting routine, you could report actual voltage measured, as an extra sensor
(I actually thought that I had removed everything related to the old monitoring code)
Edited
I have updated the sketch for sensebender micro, to include sending battery voltage measurements as a sensor value. This is not enabled by default though, and people need to recompile it, with a #define uncommented.
do a pull from mysensors github, to get the latest sourcecode
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@hautomate said:
3,091 in stock
That's the old A10. It would probably work but A20 has some firmware fixes and more tests performed on it.
I have nothing to say about the price. It is the same as for A20.. As you can see it is the most expensive part on the micro board (30% of it's price).@hek said:
That's the old A10. It would probably work but A20 has some firmware fixes and more tests performed on it.
I have nothing to say about the price. It is the same as for A20.. As you can see it is the most expensive part on the micro board (30% of it's price).Would you consider a Sensebender Micro Light-version without this component? i mean, if it's 30 % of the price, not available and not imo a critical component (you could always add your own humidity/temp sensors), there are quite a few reasons why a light version would be tempting. At least to me. :)
Cheers,
Tim -
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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...
