nRF24Doctor

Technovation

I thought the percentage shown corresponds to Nbr_of_fail / Total_Counter, but it is not and i assume percentage is rather calculated over last X

It is indeed calculated over the last 100 msg's. In that way you have some "real-time" feedback on your connection quality (i.e. suppose you would have had 10.000 good msg's and it would start to fail - it will take +/-100 failed msg's to drop a single 1%).

You can calculate the percentage based on the total nr of msg's by getting the total MESSAGE COUNT displayed at Counters page and combine that with the values from FAIL and NACK on the Statistics page.

benbidouille

@Technovation
Many thanks, I took opportunity of the only oversized 20x2 LCD device I had, to add the Nbr_of_fail / Total_Counter statistics display, very useful for cumulative % on long run in addition to original last 100 msg.

I also wanted to share with you importance of having a proper shielding (underneath green tape is aluminium film) where only Radio OEM module is exposed.

Under PA+LNA in the worst case conditions (max power), shielding significantly increases TX RX reliability (ideally OEM module body should also be shielded)
Cheers

benbidouille

Hello,

This is me again
I intended to modify my existing W5100 GW to incorporate Doctor features, W5100 based on an Arduino NANO but I'm facing an architecture issue.

Mysensor recommends W5100 GW to use a Soft SPI for the NRF24 Radio as seems W5100 and NRF24 both on same SPI bus fails to operate.

GW Doctor requires IRQ which Soft SPI doesn't support, so sketch fails to compile with below error.

#error RF24 IRQ usage cannot be used with Soft SPI

Has somebody worked-around that situation and succeded to have a W5100 Doctor GW ?

Thanks in advance

Yveaux

@benbidouille you can run W5100 with hardware spi but there are many revisions of the W5100 arduino shield available. Some of them eg require to have a defined state of the SD card select line before mySensors starts. Not a big problem, but you need to understand your hardware.
That's why soft spi is suggested.

benbidouille

@Yveaux
Thanks a lot for your feedback.

I used very basic W5100 HW as on below link link text.

Why MySensor forum do mention "The W5100 ethernet module has problems sharing SPI with radio" recommending to use soft SPI with such unit without SD card ?

I must admit, I implemented sketch and wiring as recommended by MySensor forum with no brainer.

Lots of post like here link text seems also to confirm issues in the way W5100 handles SPI bus, a reel night mare, I haven't found any succesfull experience in forum yet.

Should you have further information or maybe working sketch to share, I would very much appreciate.

I have no logic analyzer so would prefer to avoid entering in long debug session but if you confirm W5100 and NRF on same SPI bus should work, i'll make a trial and rewire mine.
Regards

Yveaux

@benbidouille I've run multiple gateways using W5100 on hw spi with atmega328 and never had any issues apart from that SD card select line.
I'm not sure why the docs mention there would be a sharing issue.

benbidouille

@Yveaux
Thanks so much for confirmation,
Seems a large community of people faced the issue here back in 2014 link text , and the recomendation comes from this past experience.

My undertanding is nobody re-challenged the recomendation and possibly are we the only one interested in getting IRQ with NRFDoctor.

So is a good news you confirm it works.
Can I assume you use same W5100 HW shield as mine and that you have for HW connections:

W5100 (CS/MOSI/MISO/CLK) wired respectively on HW SPI (10,11,12,13)
NRF24 also on HW SPI for (MOSI/MISO/CLK) only and differentiated CS/CE/IRQ on for instance respectively 6/5/2

Regards and thanks for these precious informations that will help me saving time.
Regards

TRS-80

@Yveaux said in nRF24Doctor:

I've run multiple gateways using W5100 on hw spi with atmega328 and never had any issues apart from that SD card select line.

Very interesting. I just (few weeks ago) built an Ethernet gateway recently and at the time followed the recommendation for soft SPI. Then more recently I read about hardware SPI being required for MY_RX_MESSAGE_BUFFER_FEATURE which of course would be a valuable feature on a gateway.

@benbidouille,

Did you ever investigate further? Even if not, I will probably do so on my own, sooner or later, as I have a few of the various W5500 cheap modules here...

pw44

Hya,

correct me if i'm wrong.

To make use of this, two units must be built. One for node and other for gateway.

Is this undestanding correct? If not, how to use nRF24DoctorGateway and nRF24DoctorNode?

Thx in advance.

Yveaux

@pw44 said in nRF24Doctor:

Is this undestanding correct?

Yes it is

canyouhearmenow

I need some help.
I just built an NRF24Doctor following the instruction in the post and on Github.

When no NRF24 module is connected, the device starts properly, displays the menu on the LCD, and when I try to select a menu item, it (correctly) displays "Radio init error. Replace radio".
When an NRF24 mode is connected (I tried several), the LCD is blank, the serial monitor shows "Channel:90 PaLevel:HIGH PaLevelGw:LOW DataRate:250KBPS Dest:0 Payload:2 Rate:10" in an endless loop.
when I run the older "nRf24L01+ connection quality meter" software, it starts ok and the LCD shows FAIL 0% and MISS 0% as expected.

Any ideas for what might cause this problem? Almost looks like it resets in a loop, maybe because the watchdog triggers? or stack corruption?

lyubo.assenov

Hello all,

First things first - this is a great device, kudos to everybody involved!

I built a buggy nrf24Doctor - it wasn't measuring the current consumption at all ("xxx Err" message). Trying to fix it led me to refactor the - splitting it into smaller "components" and adapting the project structure to VSCode/platform-io (ArduinoIDE is not my cup of tea).

If someone is interested, the code can be found at github.

Regards,
L.

broomnest

The output of the display could also be sent over serial, but the whole idea is you can walk around with the doctor and improve your results as you go.

ben999

Sorry to necro this old post :(
I have just uploaded @yveaux's version of nRF24 doctor to a Nano.

@Yveaux said in nRF24Doctor:

https://github.com/TechNovation01/nRF24Doctor/blob/master/pcb/nRFDoctor_1.1_sch.pdf

I got all the right libraries installed into IDE (especially LCDMenuLib2.h version 1.2.7, i also tried several other versions close to 1.2.7 just to be sure).
But when compiling i get the following errors :

/tmp/ccMpih6l.ltrans0.ltrans.o: In function `global constructors keyed to 65535_0_nRF24QualityMeter03.ino.cpp.o.3416':
<artificial>:(.text.startup+0x19a): undefined reference to `lcdml_menu_display()'
<artificial>:(.text.startup+0x19c): undefined reference to `lcdml_menu_display()'
<artificial>:(.text.startup+0x1a6): undefined reference to `lcdml_menu_clear()'
<artificial>:(.text.startup+0x1a8): undefined reference to `lcdml_menu_clear()'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
exit status 1
Erreur de compilation pour la carte Arduino Nano

That is a bit above my knowledge. Could someone please point me into the right direction? Could it be just a case of "wrong naming" of variables ?

ben999

I might be able to answer that myself !

Looks like i have forgotten to "combine" a .ino file (CharLcdMenu.ino) with the main one (nRF24DoctorNode.ino), which seems to be a bit like a sub-program.

edit: that's it. Just had to create a second TAB with that sub-program, compile and success.

Please forgive my lack of vocabulary and knowldge, i am a "copy-paste" engineer :D

OldSurferDude

It's great when a project can be brought to life after 8 years!

ben999

@OldSurferDude as long as we’re using nRFs this project is still relevant :D

I am now facing some more troubles:

The nRFNode cannot connect to GW.

Looks like a software issue. The exact same setup connects to GW when loaded with a very basic sketch (relay in my case). I am using @yveaux 's sketch from his Github.
Could this sketch not be compatible with today's API ?

OldSurferDude

@ben999

@ben999 said:

very basic sketch

My guess is that because you're not using the LCD in the basic sketch that talking to the LCD is causing radio interference.

To test this theory and assuming you have the LED connected, the LCD code could be replaced with flash-code code.

My technique for doing this replacement is to use compiler directives to remove the LCD code and add flash-code code.

To remove the LCD code, create a new compiler flag
#define LCD_ENABLE
Surround all LCD code with

#ifdef LCD_ENABLE
...
#endif

Then comment out the definition line which disables the LCD.

Create another new compiler flag
#define FC_PIN 4
and comment out both the compiler directives that create TRIGGER_PIN and LED_PIN

At the point in the existing code where the LCD is to display the quality, put a call to your new routine, This call will pass the quality number to the code that generates a flash code. So this new code can be easily disabled, surround your code with:

#ifndef FC_PIN
...
#endif

Yes, I make a huge assumption that you understand this (compiler directives, flash-code, etc.). If you don't, I, or others, can help out, but you'd learn more if you did it on your own.

ben999

@OldSurferDude thank you very much for taking time to explain.

I didn't make it clear enough from my side though.

My "test" setup here is not the whole "nRF Doctor", as i got fed up with it !!

Last night i just grabbed a Nano and a red nRF (eByte).

Then loaded a random basic sketch and it got connected to GW straight away.

After that i loaded @yveaux 's sketch and it never reached the GW (although changes were made to sketch, such as default channel (76), power level and transmission speed. These changes were made to files located in the "share" directory, that are called via "#include").
Yveaux's sketch is based on API ver 2.2.0... latest stable is 2.3.2. So i tried different versions other than 2.3.2 but they all ended up with errors when compiling.

I'll keep on digging tonight anyway (and report errors).

ben999

Quick update:
-compiling with MySensors librairy ver 2.3.2 gives no error but my simple setup cannot reach GW with the following debug on serial monitor:

0 MCO:BGN:INIT NODE,CP=RNNNA---,FQ=16,REL=255,VER=2.3.2
4 MCO:BGN:BFR
35 TSM:INIT
36 TSF:WUR:MS=100
43 TSM:INIT:TSP OK
45 TSM:INIT:STATID=250
47 TSF:SID:OK,ID=250
49 TSM:FPAR
72 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,250-250-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
137 MCO:BGN:STP
151 TSF:WUR:MS=2000
2080 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
2082 TSM:FPAR
2105 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,250-250-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
2166 MCO:BGN:INIT OK,TSP=0
4113 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
4115 TSM:FPAR
4139 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,250-250-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
6147 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
6149 TSM:FPAR
6172 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,250-250-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
8180 !TSM:FPAR:FAIL
8181 TSM:FAIL:CNT=1
8183 TSM:FAIL:DIS
8185 TSF:TDI:TSL
18187 TSM:FAIL:RE-INIT
18189 TSM:INIT
18195 TSM:INIT:TSP OK
18197 TSM:INIT:STATID=250
18200 TSF:SID:OK,ID=250
18202 TSM:FPAR
18225 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,250-250-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
20233 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
20235 TSM:FPAR
20258 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,250-250-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
22266 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
22268 TSM:FPAR
22291 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,250-250-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
24299 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
24301 TSM:FPAR
24324 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,250-250-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:
26332 !TSM:FPAR:FAIL
26333 TSM:FAIL:CNT=2
26335 TSM:FAIL:DIS
26337 TSF:TDI:TSL
36340 TSM:FAIL:RE-INIT
36342 TSM:INIT
36348 TSM:INIT:TSP OK
36350 TSM:INIT:STATID=250
36354 TSF:SID:OK,ID=250
36356 TSM:FPAR
36379 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,250-250-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:

and so on

compiling with MySensors librairy ver 2.2.0 (as mentionned in the sketch) gives me the following error:

Compilation error: 'RF24_PA_LOW' was not declared in this scope

same error with MySensors librairy ver 2.3.0

nRF24Doctor

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