Is it possible to use a W5100 shield on a Mega2560 that has a prototype shield on top? I am not sure, because the ICSP headers are moved in a corner of the proto shield.
Hello, you should give a try to "EasyPCB" it's very convenient to use and to make first sensors that are clean and without wires everywhere. It keeps things simple but still have a connector for each pin of the pro mini. I found it really great when I started with MySensors and still use sensors made with it now.
Cost will be very low:
less than 1.5$ for the PCB
less than 2$ for the arduino pro mini clone
less than 1$ for the NRF24L01+
Less than 5$ including capacitor for the radio, resistors, solder, ...
5$ left for the sensor, that's enough for a lot of options.
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/2740/easy-newbie-pcb-for-mysensors/
https://www.openhardware.io/view/4/EasyNewbie-PCB-for-MySensors
Hi ruslan, sorry for delay.
I am not sure but I think I did not change anything in RF_Config.h but found out that the radio needs to be connected to those pins 50, 51, 52. Have a look at the mega pinout sheet. It tells you that 50=miso, 51=mosi, 52=sck. So I connected the radio to those pins and it worked. That configuration runs on a sensor without ethernet shield. I believe that it has nothing to do with the shield but more with that special mega pinout.
Could you simply remove the shield, attach the radio and download a sensor sketch to make sure that the mega and the radio work together. After that step attach the shield and try again with a gateway sketch.
@LastSamurai,
Very nice project you have here! Thank you for taking the time to post/share your work!
At first I thought it might be exactly what I was looking for, but reading through everything now I am not so sure.
I have been studying various ways (Wi-Fi, 433/315 Mhz RF, MySensors) to implement controlling RGB lights and I initially thought Wi-Fi (while readily available, easy, and cheap) might be too "slow" in response time, which got me thinking to use MySensors (with NRF24) instead, which led me to this thread (among others).
Something concerned me though, I see in your GitHub for this project you stated:
Project frozen/final - This project is done from my side. It has been working for years but I switched to another solution so I won't update this anymore.
and on your OpenHardware page:
Update2: They have been running for about 2 years now mostly without problems. The only disadvantage is that my Mysensors network overall is quite "slow" (~1s reaction time). I am currently experimenting with Wifi RGBWW controllers (H801) so there wont be to many more updates to this project
Which made me want to ask you what you are using now?
It seems to me that those MagicHome type Wi-Fi (or RF) RGB controllers would be pretty hard to beat price wise, I don't think I could implement similar functionality (including packaging, etc.) for the same amount of money, and that's before even counting my time.
Also I am still struggling with reliability of my MySensors network in general, but I hope to be able to still solve this as it seems that many others have been able to (but that is a different subject altogether).
UPDATE: if at one point you need to use GPIO18 for something other then RF24L01 then you have to delete the spi-cs-extend.dtbo file from the /boot/overlays/ and then reboot.
Well, it could be that the issue is the voltage regulator on the Arduino board. The higher the input voltage, the more power/heat that needs to be burnt at the voltage regulator. Maybe it's self-limiting because it's getting too hot?
The Arduino website lists this part as the voltage regulator:
https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/146/SPX1117-1889129.pdf
On page 6 it claims a thermal resistance to ambient of 46 degrees/W. If you're using 1A and have 12V input then you're dropping 7W across the regulator. This is a temp rise at the junction of 322 degrees over ambient, which it obviously won't do. The datasheet also says that it's internally regulated and will current limit at 155C. Assuming 25C ambient, this only leaves a margin of ~2.8W that can be dropped over the regulator. So you'd have problems with any more than around 400mA. To have a safety margin, I wouldn't plan on more than 300mA or so, or maybe even down more towards 200.
This voltage regulator is a nice, low dropout one, so if you could power it from a supply that gave it 6 or 7V instead of the 12 that would give you a ton more thermal margin and the regulator could then allow a lot more current through.
