@NeverDie Yep, that rocket stuff, and that dedication-to-task stuff, is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing - very inspirational.

At a more modest level ... I received the Atmega 328P programming harness/clamp you recommended long ago. Nice. And your barebones board loaded with my RFM69HCW jig are working nicely. Also received: a bunch of your suggested radios and the carrying boards. Time, I need time. Can't thank you and @alphaHotel enough for the encouragement. I look forward to reporting if only to chronical for my own record and possible use for others.

I hope it doesn't take me 7 years, but it may. Now all I need is a bunch of 48 hour days.

@NeverDie said in Anyone using/tried the E28-2G4M27S 2.4Ghz LoRa SX1280 27dB module?:

ey'd have a different ISP, or, if not, can at least pass your traffic to someone else on the LoRaWAN who has a different ISP than you. If you were also running Amazon Sidewalk, then you'

@NeverDie. Thanks for your write-up. Before I lose my train of thought and go look at StuartsProjects I have to ask about the EasyEDA design: doesn't it make TX/RX much better with no groundplane around the antenna? I've just completed a 433 MHz project and found that I was better to get the TX side way off my groundplaned board. Also, I've noticed that other ESP8266 breakouts dutifully remove the groundplane from breakout boards that would be near the ESP's built-in PCB antenna.

I don't know much about radio's so can easily accept any comment for the better, or even ridicule. I've learned as much as I can about radios from Andreas Spiess. He would simply test the difference with a RF sensor.

@NeverDie said in Most reliable "best" radio:

would last... ready for it?.... 1,537 years!

Have you considered comedy as a profession? I love your postings. The self-discharge of the human is another limitation. Unless, of course, you have a couple of Methuselahs in your progeny and a good set of instructions. And I know you can write good ones.
Thanks for the post.

@NeverDie said in Most reliable "best" radio:

What all does the elder care entail? If it's just supervision, maybe you can provide it using your automation skills.

Thanks for asking. Yea, I thought of assigning a robot to the task of caring for my mother, but then I would be cast to the dungeon of my own making. Broken-hip, surgery, Rehab, Discharge - it is complicated and demanding. Fortunately we have skilled nursing and CNA's to do the bulk of the hard work. But getting mom's 'extended' taxes done, pain management intervention, arranging for PT, OT, Surgeon follow-up, rehab facility discharge, hemotologists, PCP's and where to land... it is a full time job. And then there is emotional support visits for the patient, my mom, while stress among sibilings and spouses becomes damaging. We all live too long.

Yea, programming radios is my relief: develop, test, then correct. Far less human, and far more certain and way more fun. And when you are done for the day... you simply go to sleep. Sweet!

I've been rereading this thread this evening. I'm glad for the record as I can relearn - even from myslef. So many great ideas that need further work by me. My 433 ASK transmitters are now controlled by 328P chips because the transmit times can be limited to 200 mS at about 6mA. I know, some of your radios can transmit faster but I'm just now divorcing my HT12E and HT12D chips and that is going to take time. Baby steps.

On my new config (Barebones/SR501 motion detector/433 transmitor, the sleep current seems to be about 62 uA and that supports the SR501 motion detectors. That power dominates the energy profile of the device and is near the shelf-discharge of the battery - so it doesn't deserve much study. But the speed of the radio transmission does warrent further study since that is the high current period.

@NeverDie. Thanks for the comment. I'm not sure if I've got that ground-plane radio interferance thing right. Maybe there is a SMD socket thing in which a radio could be clipped so you don't have to commit a radio to the board to find out. I've not seen one but I've not looked. Maybe it is time to invent one with springs to receive castellated edges. A jig like that would also serve ESP8266's. I like the PTH sockets for this kind of experimentation.
The idea of sawing off the top just north of the TXEN/RXEN connections is good. Maybe you could do that after mounting so you could test before AND after. That would be definitive.
On the other hand a redesign and reorder from OSHPark can't be that much of a setback. I really enjoy their service. They happen to be less than 5 miles from my home - but they ship globally. Small world.
Let me know what you learn. I'll learn with you much as I have been doing with hundreds of your other posts - and I thank you.

@NeverDie Sorry to bother again... but I gotta say this Hartley traning video has been monumental. I always thought the world was divided into AC and DC. NOW, I think I get it: DC circuits flipping on and off at a SIGNAL frequency are actually AC just with a different voltage basis. The KEY, Hartley says, is that the energy is not in the trace, but in the field during the rise and fall of voltage. This is also helping me to finally understand inductance. WHY didn't they say this 40 years ago in school? Oh, perhaps I was sleeping as I did.
This is a breakthrough that may lead me to understanding antennae theory and a bunch of other stuff. I thank you for the introduction. I gotta go find this Hartley fellow to thank him.

@NeverDie said in Anyone using/tried the E28-2G4M27S 2.4Ghz LoRa SX1280 27dB module?:

Anyhow, if you find out anything more, I'd be interested.

Eric Bogatin, master and professor of signal integrity, gave this presentation at an Altuim conference. At about 42:00 he talks about 7 Habits of Good Design. This, again, has more to do with PCB design and not radio performance. I have a suspicion that several radio boards I designed failed not because of the transmitter, but because of bad PCB design. I can make a failed transmitter (whip antennae) board work by putting the 433 MHz transmitter on a 7" leash away from the board. Now that is a sign.

@ejlane - Thanks. I'm just now learning of the EMI/EMC testing required for commercial products and FCC requirements. While that exceeds the requirements and budget for my home projects, I do think that I might employ the pre EMI testing that one can do with a scope and probes. That may drive me back to school to learn scopes!

@ejlane & @NeverDie: Amazing technology that was available for $1 was … too hard to believe. Even $5 for a ProMini is pretty mind-blowing. Not that I buy commodities, I do buy these components a dozen at a time to save on shipping even when it is ‘free’. I laugh at myself when I spend a week of my time on a $2 chip and then wonder how I can rework it from a PCB (never worth the attempt). Compared to any other hobby or habit this radio-electronic stuff is cheaper than cooking top-ramen at home.
BTW, thanks for the radio discussion posted last week. I will read and learn later.

@NeverDie, Thanks again for all the blogging on this subject. If you have not yet ordered your custom low-noise PCB, I had one design idea. If you flip the ProMini orientation end over end most of the traces will be shorter, especially the RX/TX lines. I’ve not examined the code, but I’d think that the RX/TX connections have the most signal activity on the board, thus EMI potential. I like how you keep all the traces on one side. That should solve the interrupted ground-plane problem we learned from Rick Hartley above.

It is far more fun to roll-your-own. Alternatively, I was thinking … I just checked the Moteino breakout boards from Felix at LowerPowerLabs to see if those would work with your Ebyte radios: too bad, different pinout. I just bought a few Moteinos (915 mhz) boards to save myself from my low-quality solder jobs and shaky hands – only $13 but I have to add my own radio or spend another $7. Everything I've seen from LowPowerLabs has been high quality.

@NeverDie. You are way out there, man! Thanks to the references to the other boards made by you. What fantastic contributions to the maker market.
I suppose D20 and D21 are the same as PCINT6/XLTAL1 and PCINT7/XTAL2? I once reassigned RX and TX on an Attiny85 to RX and TX (edit: output functions) as I was pin limited. It took some doing, but that is the beauty of these multifunction pin assignments. The code, if I remember, had to be in the loop after a delay in the setup; that gave me a way to access the RX/TX pins again to reprogram if necessary. Maybe there are similar challenges with bypassing the crystal.
@samh. So you are setting power levels on the fly. Very clever.

It has been a long time but I’ve learned a few things that I wanted to share.

1. This library of information (Thank you NeverDie and others) has been so helpful in my hobby developments.
2. Software Defined Radios for signal analysis. With the help of Andreas Spiess explanation of IQ transformations, I learned about Software Defined Radios and I bought one (RTL-SDR). Using this I can clearly discriminate between effective 433 MHz transmitters and bad ones. Not only is the signal density displayed on the software (SDR#) but so is the frequency.
3. Power Profiler Kit II has been indispensable in watching power usage and seeing into the details of the radio transmission. In effect this thing has saved me from buying an oscilloscope for my simple little bench.
4. Tonight, I saw this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9nycymUd-I It describes common PCB errors. It is too advanced for me, but I did pick-up a few ideas about ground planes (tip #6 from the video).

I hope this is of some value for folks.

@NeverDie said in Most reliable "best" radio:

What all does the elder care entail? If it's just supervision, maybe you can provide it using your automation skills.

Thanks for asking. Yea, I thought of assigning a robot to the task of caring for my mother, but then I would be cast to the dungeon of my own making. Broken-hip, surgery, Rehab, Discharge - it is complicated and demanding. Fortunately we have skilled nursing and CNA's to do the bulk of the hard work. But getting mom's 'extended' taxes done, pain management intervention, arranging for PT, OT, Surgeon follow-up, rehab facility discharge, hemotologists, PCP's and where to land... it is a full time job. And then there is emotional support visits for the patient, my mom, while stress among sibilings and spouses becomes damaging. We all live too long.

Yea, programming radios is my relief: develop, test, then correct. Far less human, and far more certain and way more fun. And when you are done for the day... you simply go to sleep. Sweet!

I've been rereading this thread this evening. I'm glad for the record as I can relearn - even from myslef. So many great ideas that need further work by me. My 433 ASK transmitters are now controlled by 328P chips because the transmit times can be limited to 200 mS at about 6mA. I know, some of your radios can transmit faster but I'm just now divorcing my HT12E and HT12D chips and that is going to take time. Baby steps.

On my new config (Barebones/SR501 motion detector/433 transmitor, the sleep current seems to be about 62 uA and that supports the SR501 motion detectors. That power dominates the energy profile of the device and is near the shelf-discharge of the battery - so it doesn't deserve much study. But the speed of the radio transmission does warrent further study since that is the high current period.

@NeverDie said in Most reliable "best" radio:

your garage remote most likely uses some kind of rolling code

Yep, that's me. I figured the relay/repeater would echo the same rolling code in-and-out without having to figure it out. I've got enough earthly bound problems that are hard enough, so I'll take your advice and spend my festering curiosity on something more productive. But still ths PPKII is pretty danged cool.

@NeverDie Excellent thinking on the signal detection. I think I'm going to build a garage door repeater. While the signal probably has some kind of encryption, maybe all I need to do is to repeat the same signal. But before I do that, I’ve got to return to the radio project you inspired. Elder-care has all of my time for now.
My description above was a bit cryptic. What I marvel at is that I was only measuring the device power and didn’t know the transmitted code would be revealed in the power profile. But that makes sense now for most any battery powered transmitter including OOK, ASK protocols. As such your thought about detecting codes from TV remotes to garage doors would apply just by measuring the power battery power to the device. Effectively the PPKII becomes an O’scope.

@NeverDie Here is a view of what the Power Profiler Kit II sampler (100,000 samples/second) could see. This is my 433 MHz radio/motion-detector rig picking up motion and sending a HT12E 12-bit address/data byte. Really fun to see that the ones and the zeros can be clearly seen in the FSK profile of the measured current of the device.

@NeverDie Sorry for the slow response/question. Elder care still demands the day(s).

Is the bounced signal physical? Or is it electronic reflection? I suppose it would be difficult to decipher.

@NeverDie If I remember correctly, I was working on 433 MHz radios at the time - so a little slower rate. The sampling rate available though Audacity was way more than I needed to see the digital signal. At the time it was my first introduction to digital radio. And, in life so often, the first experience is the best. And it helped me realize that more advanced SW/HW like the PPKII depend on the same sampling of a signal. Pretty danged cool.

@NeverDie A young Scott Harden taught me, via Youtube how to use a soundcard and Audacity recording SW as an o'scope. He would transmit a known preamble followed by a known pattern. I think this can be done in OSK, FSK, OOK. When the data is in Audacity, or an o'scope, then you can take your time to learn the timing of the transmitted and received signal. Seeing is believing, for me.

@NeverDie said in Which PCB fab do you currently like the best?:

... a project stalling out for want of a nail...

That is poetic.

I try to have some sympathy for my favorite (OSH_Park) and order multiple boards at once. Some pain of waiting is involved - only a week - and some waste is incurred by me as I correct my own errors before they ship. But I do like that they only ship three boards, instead of five, when I only need one. They must be annoyed by little-guys like me so I try to do my part with loyalty.

@NeverDie Here is a set I found on Amazon.

Do you have a Dremel tool? I'll bet there are several sets of those. Dremel also has a nice jig that will hold the drill stationary and you can press down through it.

Drilling the hole is one thing, connecting it to a trace could be a little tricky.

[Edit: spelling errors.]