💬 Easy/Newbie PCB for MySensors

[2rDK]

Please note, that when using the link to ITEAD, the order is not actually completed. The order is received by ITEAD, you get an order confirmation and everything, but the order is actually not processing before you upload the gerber files.

This may be a beginners mistake, as it is the first time i'm using this service. I had the understanding that when you pressed the shopping cart above, and chose a service the gerber-part of the transaction would be handled automatic.

I dont know if this is a misunderstanding on my side, I may have misunderstood the instructions on this site. It also may be an error on ITEAD's side as they didn't process the order correctly.
What is your experience with this ?
My problem is solved now, as I wrote and asked ITEAD for status. They made me aware of the issue and I emailed them the gerbers.

This is in no way a critique of the project. I really appreciate the hours of work put into it.

[hek]

@R2DK, sounds strange.

Should just be a one-click operation to order... and you shouldn't have to do any gerber uploads.
Could you PM me who you were in contact with over at ITEAD?

[sundberg84]

We have sold pcbs from itead before and this is the first time I hear this. As @hek said it should be a 1 click operation but something maybe went wrong just this time?

[mickecarlsson]

This happened to me too, I ordered from the link, and thought I was Ok with the order. Yesterday I did find out that my order was waiting for the gerber files, so I downloaded, zipped and uploaded the to itead. I also mailed them about it. Got a reply that they should check the gerber files.

[sundberg84]

@mickecarlsson - I think @hek are looking into this... if I look at my Sales stat there are mostly ordered/aborted from Itead without known reason so they have not been comfirmed. The lastest revision from EasyPCB is over 7 months old and works great with PCBway... so if the gerber files are bad I hope I would have been notised before.

[hek]

I have mailed the person responsible for the integration. Hope to get some answers tomorrow.

[mickecarlsson]

Allright, now it looks like I am getting them :+1:
PCBs have been finished and are ready to be sent out.

[markjgabb]

same hear...i ordered from itead...i had to upload the gerbers myself....

[dakipro]

I have some issues with battery powered version with this board, maybe someone can point out what I did wrong. I have several of these boards working great (rev 8 says on them, the radio cap is however properly connected). I recently noticed that battery powered sensors do not work if battery is under 2.7v (on one pro mini it goes under 2.3v) even thought I have 3.3v booster. I have one dht22 sensor, measuring resistors and cap, bat jumper, basically my board looks exactly like example on the openharware, this one https://www.openhardware.io//uploads/568ed84b60aa3f8965fbf095/image/Rev8 Bat.jpg
Also did the battery hack, removed led and removed onboard regulator.
I have rechecked several times, changed several radios and several arduinos, but they just wont work reliably on lover battery power then 2.8v . Is that the limit?
I cannot debug using serial adapter, as when I connect it, then pro works fine as it gets 3.3v from the pc.
But here is some debug measurements I did on 2.5v batteries: vcc - gnd pins on pro mini show 3.3v. Pins out of booster do show 3.3v. So do pins on the dht22.
Pins on the radio show 2.5v, so do D2-gnd show 2.5v (or -2.5v i forgot). Why does pin2 have 2.5v, I have desoldered it so it is not connected to anything, I guess that is some feedback voltage from the radio (as dht22 gets 3.3v) Can this pin (or voltage measurement a0) somehow disturb the pro mini?
Do you have some suggestions on how I can debug what is going on?
The led on arduino goes red for 3-4s, then goes off for 2s then again red for 3s, then off...
I have two identical boards, and only thing that is determining the lov limit is pro mini modules. Some of them go to 2.7v (on both boards) and on of them goes down to 2.3v on both boards. I do not understand why when they do get 3.3v on the vcc from the booster?

What is the lowest voltage the batteries can go (with the 3.3v booster)?

[sundberg84]

@dakipro - hi!

but they just wont work reliably on lover battery power then 2.8v . Is that the limit?

No, the limit should be (if you have a genuine radio) 1,9v. Im not sure what kind of voltages a clone will manage, but my nodes goes below 2.8v!

I cannot debug using serial adapter, as when I connect it, then pro works fine as it gets 3.3v from the pc.

This should not be a problem - you can power the node from the "normal" way and just connect RX/TX and GND from the ftdi to the arduino ftdi header. I have done this several times.

D2-gnd show 2.5v

The IRQ line from the radio is 2.5v since thats what the radio gets. Im not exactly sure what this does, but in SPI which is what the radio are using, its either HIGH or LOW so 2.5v sounds right since the radio has that voltage. This should not disturb the arduino! This is changed in REV9 so you can disconnect D2 from the radio if wanted. You should not use D2 for any sensor below Rev9.

The led on arduino goes red for 3-4s, then goes off for 2s then again red for 3s, then off...

Sounds like the radio is transmitting... if this goes on and on it can mean the radio isnt getting connected/ack or establish a way to the gateway.

Do you have some suggestions on how I can debug what is going on?

You need to check the debut output (see above)!
Could you describe the issue? Are the node lost from the controller?

What is the lowest voltage the batteries can go (with the 3.3v booster)?

1.9v is the minimum to the radio.
0,8v is the minimum for the booster.

[dakipro]

Thank you for your answer, the tip about debugging helped a lot.
I now checked on one board and it looks that some pro minis are having problems when battery voltage goes bellow certain level (f.eks. 2.7v).
Testing results:
"good pro mini" works up to 2.0v , on 1.9v it shows fallowing errors

send: 4-4-0-0 s=1,c=0,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,st=fail:
find parent
send: 4-4-255-255 s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,st=bc:
send: 4-4-0-0 s=2,c=0,t=6,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,st=fail:
temp: nan
nan
send: 4-4-0-0 s=255,c=3,t=0,pt=1,l=1,sg=0,st=fail:62
send: 4-4-0-0 s=2,c=1,t=0,pt=7,l=5,sg=0,st=fail:0.00
send: 4-4-0-0 s=1,c=1,t=1,pt=7,l=5,sg=0,st=fail:0.0

"bad pro mini" works fine above 2.7, on 2.6 it logs

84973 MCO:SLP:MS=15000,SMS=1,I1=255,M1=255,I2=255,M2=255
85047 !MCO:SLP:TNR
85874 TSM:FAIL:RE-INIT
85897 TSM:INIT
85919 TSM:INIT:TSP OK
85942 TSM:INIT:STATID=3
85968 TSF:SID:OK,ID=3
85991 TSM:FPAR
86042 TSF:MSG:SEND,3-3-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
88117 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
88141 TSM:FPAR
88193 TSF:MSG:SEND,3-3-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
90269 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
90294 TSM:FPAR
90345 TSF:MSG:SEND,3-3-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
92422 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
92446 TSM:FPAR
92497 TSF:MSG:SEND,3-3-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
94574 !TSM:FPAR:FAIL
94595 TSM:FAIL:CNT=4
94617 TSM:FAIL:PDT
95066 MCO:SLP:MS=4999
95088 !TSF:SND:TNR
95610 MCO:SLP:TPD

What I see on the log parser is that the "No potential parents replied to find parent request" pops out as the biggest issue, suggesting that radio communication is not doing well.

I am testing using the small bench power supply (the Chinese ones with the oled screen) so the current should not be the problem. Why would pro mini be the problem, when it is getting 3.3v directly from same stepup?
The radio and all other components are exactly the same in all the tests i just swap the minis, I think radio would have failed with both minis if it is the radio... or perhaps the signal to the radio is not good/stable enough? No idea to be honest :)

If that matters: they are all getting 2.7v (or what I set) on pin 2 even though I have physically cut the connection to the radio irq (with the knife, on the board, they are not touching anything else on the board).

p.s. now that I write this, i realize that another difference is the sketch on them, "the good one" is "vanilla" mysensors 1.5 code and all the bad ones are latest mysensors using the node-manager library. I do not know enough about chip programming, but as a web developer I would think that the code should not determine minimum voltage needed on board? (or there are some routines in some strange combination doing some magic... hm...)

[dakipro]

Well I just tested with latest example from mysensors library, and we can exclude my latest p.s., nothing to do with using the node-manager (as expected).
Only difference is the pro minis (but again, they should all get 3.3v via popup)?
and on the "good" node I have mysensors 1.5 while on the others I use 2.1.

[sundberg84]

@dakipro - It looks like when the voltage drops, you are having issues with your radio (No reply and ST=Fail).
This should not be a problem, since this is powered directly from the batteries and you say there are 2.8v left.

The first thing that comes to my mind is that as the voltage drops, the booster needs to work harder and introduces more noice into the board. As the noice increase, the radio gets in trouble.
The other I can imagine is that you have a bad clone which cant handle lower voltages.

Both problems are a bit tricky to diagnose. First I would try some different radios, if possible from different batches. Second I would look more close to the booster. They vary greatly in quality and some are just really bad. Sometimes a cheramic capacitor might help (from output to gnd on the booster). You could also just disconnect the booster and see if it works (the pro mini shoudl be able to handle down to 2.8v).

[dakipro]

After several hours of debugging and changing all possible components, i built exactly same circuit on prototype board and with exactly same (active) components I was able to go down to 1.9, sometimes to 1.8, while on the easyboard only down to 2.6. I also used exactly the same booster on both prototype and on the easyboard.

But then a breakthrough, I have found one passive component that was different between the two mentioned boards! It was the radio freaking capacitor, on the "good" board it was 47uf, and on the problematic board had 4.7uf!
I changed radio cap to 47uf and I am now able to go on both boards down to 2.3v. Which is ok, not the 1.9v but it is good enough (for now :) ) So those 42.3uf were missing for radio to go ~0.5v lower in voltage I guess.

The one thing I am missing on the prototyping board is the voltage measurement circuit, so I guess that gives some 0.4v lowest threshold or something, i will test these days on the prototyping board, just to verify.

Thank you @sundberg84 for attention and help :)

Are you able to provide 1.9v on battery input on some easy board with the dht22? Like the one from the photos on the openhardware?

[sundberg84]

@dakipro - the radio capacitor is crusial which has been proven many times before so good you found out your problem. What can be a pain with the radios is that some clones/batches seems to work with on capacitor value and the next need some higher/lower value on the capacitor to work at its best.

The source is most likley what i explained above, the booster noice which interfere with the radio. On a breadboard you have much more space and possibility to put the booster further away from the radio with longer wires. This is most likley your case here...

Are you able to provide 1.9v on battery input on some easy board with the dht22? Like the one from the photos on the openhardware?

I have not made any a large quantity of measurments, because i almost never have to change my AA batteries. I have 5 Easy nodes (different revs though) with DHT22 and the only time I measured it was around 2 if I remember right. Cant remember if it was 2.0 or 2.2 though... I will keep that in mind for the next battery change but the lowest node is at 2.5V at the moment so it might take a while. If I remember right according to Domoticz I will not have to change these batteries for atleast a couple of months.

So the short answer... im not far from 1.9V, but It will depend on the radio and the booster quality.

[dbemowsk]

@dakipro Jut to test, now that you have your voltages closer with the change in capacitor, you may want to just try swapping the radio modules between the two (provided you have them in sockets) and see if the voltage drop follows the radio.
.

[dakipro]

both boards are now identical, they go down to 2.3, but I will put 2.4 in scripts as the minimum, just to be sure.
If a board boots at 2.4 it can go down til 2.2 and maybe 2.1, and it will work, but cannot reboot at that voltage.

[sundberg84]

@dakipro - 2.4 volts will last you a long time.

If you want to go further I would suggest you look at the advanced user section of the EasyPCB and remove the booster and lower BOD instead. This will not work with the DHT22 but you could change that to BME280 and the radio @ 1.9v will be your lowest point. Either that or go for a more expensive booster. Im accually trying this in another project (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10967) so I can give some feedback in a near future.

Im also building a variable power supply which might help me to try different volt levels on my boards as well... all I need now is a oscilloscope - anyone wants to fund (and teach) me :) ?

[dakipro]

I will consider that for new nodes. Where is a "advanced user section of the EasyPCB", i tried searching the forum and openhardware, but not sure what exactly you are referring to?

[gohan]

@sundberg84 wow, that's a quite expensive booster :cold_sweat: