Cant even get my first node working...

[royson84]

@gohan I made a serial gateway with an Nano+Nrf24L01+ and hooked it up to my computer. Just to bypass the possibility that my regular gateway have radio problems. But even with that simple setup I get "11 !TSM:INIT:TSP FAIL" from the Nano. I have tried with 4.7, 47 and 100uF on the radio.

[gohan]

I am kind of suspecting the radio modules have issues.

[royson84]

@gohan ok. Im gonna try with different nrfs tonight. I have 13 from 3 different vendors. Reckon at least a couple of them should work..
I have made 3 sensors with Sundberg84 amazing PCB and they have the same issues, which makes me a bit sceptical.

[royson84]

Im banging my head against the wall here. Uninstalled IDE and reinstalled version 1.6.4 and added Mysensors lib from the menus. Uploaded the GatewaySerial to a new Uno with attached radio+cap. No luck.

Uninstalled IDE and installed latest version which has Mysensors preinstalled. Same sketch. No luck. Gonna try with yet another radio. But I cant see how the 3 i've already tried could be broken.

[gohan]

can you post a picture of those radios?

[royson84]

@gohan Sure. I have tried 9 or 10 out of 13 now i think. With different libs and sketches that google found for me.

[royson84]

The first and second picture is from a seller called axeprice on ebay. Two different orders with a couple of weeks apart.
The third picture is from a swedish shop called m.nu, great shop I might add.

[gohan]

How much were they? They look quite on the cheap

[royson84]

@gohan http://www.ebay.com/itm/400594940658?rmvSB=true
Its the radios linked in mysensors store...

https://www.m.nu/breakout-boards/nrf24l01
"swedish" one.

[m26872]

@royson84 Where in Sweden are you? Maybe someone near can help you.

[sundberg84]

@royson84 - do yo have a multimeter and can comfirm there are power to the radio? If you are using the PCB you need to have atleast one jumper connected (as we spoke about - so I suspect that is ok). Could you post a picture of the complete setup?

I live pretty near you (1.5h) in worst case scenario ;)

[gohan]

@royson84 10 modules for 10$ are definitely fake clones I'd say but at least they should power up

[royson84]

@sundberg84 I do have a multimeter, but haven't used it in ages so I'm not sure how to honestly. =D

On the PCB I made all the connections by soldering but I have put that aside for now. Figure I must find out what I'm doing wrong with the radios first. Now when I'm trying to make a new serial gateway I've done so both with some soldering and some duponts.

Today, as a bit of a last restore, I'm gonna remove my radio from the ethernet gateway, which doesn't give me any failures in debug, and try the same setup with that. If that doesn't work, well..hehe.. Stuff is gonna break :smile:

I really appreciate all your help and suggestions guys!!

[sundberg84]

@royson84 - take out your mulitimeter and set it to DC (see here for symbol)

Put the black lead to gnd on the radio and the red on positive:

Also make sure the capacitors is aligned right!

If possible post a photo of the hole pcb :)

[royson84]

Ok, so it seems that I'm suffering from the ancient sickness of dumb-ass...

While connecting the radio from the gw, which has a little table on the back explaining all the pins, I realised that when connecting my other radios I forgot the mirror effect and therefore switched some of the connections :cry:

Now, when connected as they should, they work. Haha.

Also @sundberg84 i measured the voltage and on the PCB I only get about 0.03V on the radio but at the pro mini its 3.3 or thereabouts. Gonna have a look at the connections tonight.

About debugging the PCB. Do I have to remove the battery jumper when connecting the ftdi? Or do they not interfere if the battery's are off?

[sundberg84]

@royson84 - You can only have one power source so if you are using a battery make sure to disconnect one of them (normally i do not connect the voltage from the ftdi to make it as "real" as possible.) You might want to connect the ground to the ftdi though because otherwise you might get hard to read the serial output.

You should have the jumper connected at all times but if you power from the ftdi you change it to REG. Bat will feed the radio from the battery which is another circuit than the pro mini.

[royson84]

Heres pictures of one of the PCBs @sundberg84. Not sure why the power isnt reaching the radio in its full capacity. Have i not been careful enough with my soldering?

[sundberg84]

@royson84 the bat jumper isn't shorted on these pictures it looks like. You need to make a connection between the pins.

Also there are two solder blobs that might cause grounding. (Vcc on MysX connector and tx on the arduino both on the back)

[sundberg84]

@royson84 you can use the multimeter and connect/hold black to ground and measure your way through the circuit to see where the power cuts. For the radio you can go Vin, jumper, radio.