Hello,

one of my big concerns with sensors is to have something good looking without my wife asking me what this ugly plastic box is. After failed searches for good looking and small enclosures, I decided to search for electronic items and only keep their boxes. I have tried with a tiny 333cm 2$ mp3 player and managed to fit a jmodule and sensors + cr2032 inside. But the plastic is still looking too cheap.
Then I discovered those great looking wireless chargers and bought 2 different models, they are pretty bad at charging but they look really good. Only problem: they are flat. No way to put a jmodule inside so I went for an EasyPCB and removed the plastic stripes on the headers to make the pcb as flat as possible. I choosed the smaller (but thicker) black one as in the other the PCB + NRF24 was already too thick (because of the crystal).
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/QI-Wireless-Charger-Charging-Pad-for-Samsung-Galaxy-S7-S6-edge-Note-5-Nokia-HTC-8X/32694769031.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Factory-price-Qi-Wireless-Charger-Charging-Pad-for-LG-V10-Other-Qi-Phone-Mmar25/32639543557.html

To fit the pcb I had to remove the right part, and then cut the corners. Still, the antenna of the NRF 24 was too much so I had to cut it too I put a 10cm wire instead, soldered at the beginning of the cut pcb antenna and ... it works really well !
Unfortunately I couldn't fit a CR2032 after putting the PCB, so I decided to experiment with alkaline button cells, the more convenient solution was to take tiny ones (LR41/AG3) and put them between power connectors of the PCB.
I also added a bicolor led (green / red) aligned with the led window of the charger, it blinks at each sending loop, wether data is sent or not so I know it's still running. When battery level is high it blinks green, when it gets low it will blink red color so I know it's time to check if I have spare batteries. Also, voltage drop is smaller on red led so it's brighter, green led is dim even at full battery and would be invisible with low battery.

I use a SHT21 sensor and at the moment I send every minute (if values changed) the temperature, humidity, battery level (%) and battery voltage (to have history). With the led blinking that's a lot to bear for LR41 batteries (rated between 25-30 mAh) but it's done on purpose, to see how fast they get empty.

The PCB ended up pretty atrocious as I did many trials and errors with it (and kept long pins 11,12,13,RST to program the board and have to bend them to fit inside the box) but fortunately when I close the box everything is hidden and the sensor really looks good. With the led flashing it really feels like a commercial sensor you could buy in a shop. I put the sensor not too far from the usb plug hole, but there are also a opening all around the bottom of the enclosure, so I have no visible difference in measure temperature/humidity when I open or close the box.
Next step is a dedicated PCB to have a clean board and be able to fit bigger coin cell(s).

Wow I'm typing too much Here are the pictures...

Everyone is busy reading your NRF5 thread @NeverDie

Today I (finally) finished a full working version of that old Livolo 3 buttons switch. I removed the RGB led on the central button as it's not visible, but the basic switch functionality with buttons/relays and blue/red status leds runs fine.
It's running with MYSBootloader, it's really convenient to update without having to switch of the fuse and unmount everything.

A (quick) video, touch sensibility is perfect now, I'm really happy with it !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6yEdSyoMYw

I have to agree with @skywatch and a few others here, MySensors is relatively easy to start with using the documentation, you wire your pro mini & radio for gateway and sensor and you're running your first sensor in no time.
But as soon as you want to make things a bit more advanced, you face a lot of challenges that the doc on the website and suggested components make harder to solve :

• PA/LNA radio that fail, need wrapping in foil to have decent performance etc etc I'm pretty sure this is the most frequent cause of failure for MySensors network.
• examples with DHT sensors that are not convenient for battery usage => use of step up converters that create a whole set of new problems and unreliability
• PIR example with SR501 that runs at 5V so you need to alter them to run at lower voltage (3.3V) that's still not so convenient and they become unstable (triggered by radio tx/rx)

I'll make a list of suggestions to improve the docs, it will probably include writing a few more examples also, and some tutorials for a few things that are easy in fact easy to do but can seem hard from the outside like flashing bootloader on a pro mini or OTA update.

Currently I have restarted to test my NModule "shields", I will improve and/or fix them and probably convert the most useful ones to MySX Connector.

Working on clearing up the backlog of unfinished NModule shields, today I finished to test the dual touch button shield, made a script to use it as on/off button or as dual button with short press = on and long press = off, as seen below as a dual scene controller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=064Jlx2eawI

I made a box so it can be easily customized depending on what you use it for. Unfortunately internet is too bad at the moment in Vietnam to use Fusion 360 so I made it with 123D Design which is less convenient and it's not really high-end assembly

Not related to MySensors but I also assembled a first version of a battery powered led light, it's small and cheap and I will assemble a bunch to put around my home when there are some power cuts in evening/night. I'm using 3020 leds and they emit a lot of light for their small size, even with low current so I expect to get around 2 hours of battery life with the cheap aliexpress 16340 batteries, and way more than needed with the 18650 cells salvaged from my old laptop battery.
My first board with a li-ion charger and it is working well, now I'm waiting for the battery protection ics (cheap DW01 from AliExpress) to arrive as my batteries are not protected.

@dbemowsk said in What did you build today (Pictures) ?:

The nice thing about owning a 3D printer is that I don't have to buy enclosures any more. I just have to buy rolls of plastic. The sky is the limit when you have a 3D printer. I do like that enclosure though.

Can't agree more, made a quick box for the lights with "crystal" PLA. You need a lot of imagination to believe it's crystal, but it's nice for a light enclosure as it acts as diffuser.

Today, a 5uA always on display with a PCF8553 LCD driver and a GDC1038 LCD from GoodDisplay. Power consumption varies with voltage but mostly with what segments are on/off, but at 3.3V with segments on to display data on all parts of display (2*4 digit numbers and 3 letters) it's always below 6uA.

Not sure why the Youtube video won't integrate as it should, but here it is for a more animated version:
Arduino ultra low power LCD (5uA) – 00:21
— NicolasVietnam

Today I finished to fix failed soldering (too old solder paste made a mess ) on the "motherboard" of my air quality sensor.
It's based on ESP32, uses a charging IC with power path so it can run on batteries for around a day or stay plugged without destroying the battery, step down from USB/battery to get VCC, storage on I2C EEPROM, flash and/or µSD card (depending on use case), one SK6812 mini RGB led as indicator, a small 240*240 IPS LCD (backlight driven directly by ESP32 pin in high drive capability mode), a 3 way switch for basic user interface + footprint for PAJ7620 gesture recognition module, accelerometer and I2C IO expander to manage the 3 way switch and interrupts from sensor modules.
Sensor modules will be added on top, connected using an FPC connector. At the moment I made only one sensor PCB able to manage usual PM, CO2 and formaldehyde sensors. Only one sensor per sensor board where an attiny841 manages the UART sensor and convert it to I2C, it also manages the 5V step up to power the sensor.
On the main board I also added an NRF24 footprint so with the same PCB I will be able to make a gateway with integrated battery backup.

I'm pretty happy with the relatively well aligned components (no, I don't have OCD ) , too bad I had to unsolder, clean and re-solder each component as it now looks botched up. But at least everything (except a missing connection on µSD card, hence the blue wire) is working,

LCD test showing jpgs from SD card

@EddyG said:

Any news on the new board? I am really interested.

I'm testing a first version right now
It's running fine but there are some annoying defaults.
I'm making improvements to the PCB now and I will publish on openhardware.io in the coming weeks.

I'm using SMD NRF 24 with antenna outside for better reception. Radio capacitor is SMD also but big size (1206) so easy to solder.

This is what the assembled board will look like, it takes a bit more surface than jModule but as you can see it's really flat, around 7mm and less than 6mm if you remove the big reset button on the pro mini.

@skywatch said in No more batteries....:

What started this was my research into Dark Matter and Dark Energy discussions with Astronomers and Scientists. I wondered why a simple atom made of one electron around a nucleus of one proton and one neutron could remain stable when the electric charges would mandate an attractive force between the positive nucleus and negative electron. The electron can 'somehow' sustain its distance and therefore gets energy to overcome the attractive force. It can do this for millions of years with no 'conventional' input of external energy.

You can move electrons around atoms and molecules with relatively low chemical or electrical energy...
Zero point energy is the equivalent of the remaining drops of gazoline in an empty gaz tank. If you have millions of cars with "empty" gaz tanks then you're looking at a lot of energy. But it will take you way more energy to retrieve those last drops of gazoline from each tank than you will get from burning them later.
It's the same with zero point energy, getting the matter in the right conditions to be able to extract any of the remaining energy will use more energy than you will be able to collect.

Right now the world could do with cleaner energy.

Yes we all want it. But it doesn't mean we have to fall in the hand of all the scammers who have pretended for centuries to have discovered all by themselves the secrets of infinite energy. They've been updating the buzzwords but the scam is always the same, with demos using an hidden power source. It's the case for ecat they never ran it unconnected from a power supply, pretending it's using only little external power but it's very easy to cheat.

I just hope the breakthrough comes in the west because if Russia or China leapfrog us on this tech then we are at a severe disadvantage.

Breakthrough will come from international cooperation that has been happening for decades, no single country has the resources and brains to make the breakthrough all alone.

I guess that 'solar power' would have been laughed at 2 generations ago (along with nuclear power, smart phones, space stations etc...)

Chose better examples, a working demo of photovoltaic effect was done in 1839, way more than 2 generations ago... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#History

And for nuclear power, smart phone and space station yes it would have been laughed at if someone in 1900 had come up saying he built a smartphone, a nuclear power plant or a space station all by himself in his garage.
But no one laughed at Hertz when he identified and described radio waves in 1886, 10 years later there were functional radios, and 15 years later it was getting widely available to the public.
No one laughed at Fermi in 1936 when he discovered nuclear fission, only 6 years later he was running the first nuclear reactor in the US, in 1951 they were producing electricity from a nuclear reactor and in 1957 the first commercial reactor was running at full power.

Only scammers make "revolutionary" discoveries in their garage while having no experience and education in physics, pretend to be victims of the "lobbies" so they have to recourse to crowdfunding, refuse to have independent testing of their devices and pretend to have been running decades of intense research but have never published anything in a half-decent peer reviewed scientific journal.

When there's real science and real scientists behind it, the technology can progress fast and they have no problem getting some funding.

@mobsens said in No more batteries....:

There is a spectacular project just recently announced which involves making direct electrical power from ZPE(Zero Point Energy).
See https://ecat.com/science-technology.

Lol one more company perpetuating the scam. This "ecat" thing is already 10+ years old... It's just been renamed from "cold fusion" to "zero point energy" because it's a more efficient buzzword nowadays.

This is the Wikipedia page of the creator. Long past of energy-related scams...

Andrea Rossi (born 3 June 1950) is an Italian entrepreneur who claims to have invented a cold fusion device.[1][2][3]

In the 1970s, Rossi claimed to have invented a process to convert organic waste into petroleum, and in 1978 he founded a company named Petroldragon to process waste. In the 1989 the company was shut down by the Italian government amid allegations of fraud, and Rossi was arrested.[4] In 1996 Rossi moved to the United States and from 2001 to 2003 he worked under a U.S. Army contract to make a thermoelectric device that, while promising to be superior to other devices, produced only around 1/1000 of the claimed performance.[5][6]

In 2008 Rossi attempted to patent a device called an Energy Catalyzer (or E-Cat), which is a purported cold fusion or Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) thermal power source.[7][8] Rossi claims that the device produces massive amounts of excess heat that can be used to produce electricity, but independent attempts to reproduce the effect have failed.

My guess is the current state is the same than when they got their patent: a totally pseudoscientific state

The Tesla quote promising infinite energy that you can see at the end of the text in your link is a trademark of the "alt scientists" who have been dreaming of infinite energy, perpetual motion etc etc for decades but have produced nothing valuable for humanity while gobbling a lot of money from gullible people who "invested" in their technologies.

@NeverDie thank you for taking the time to read all my long messages
I mostly read from news in French from (relatively) reliable newspapers but I try to cross check with their own sources, and trying to avoid the infamous confirmation bias which is a very hard task So sorry, no good single reliable source to share, I think that's the key, try to get multiple sources and avoid the bogus ones: those who can't recognize their mistakes, who try to bend reality to fit their narratives, who pretend they have a miracle cure based on cherry picked or self-made low quality studies etc etc

And of course always remember that even from "experts" in virology/epidemiology predictions are only best guesses and we can never be sure of anything, it takes time to see which hypothesis becomes reality. While media can't wait and are ready to invite anyone who is willing to give answers, the most probable outcome is not always the one that will happen. As seen in France right now, it was expected the Omicron outbreak would fade away like it's doing in UK after peaking last week, while in the end a sub-variant that seems even more transmissible has taken over and made contamination numbers increase again and set new records (0.7% of population tested positive on Tuesday only !).

So trust those that dare to say they are not sure and talk about the other possibilities, and whatever the subject is, always try to check the solidity of the data/information on which what you hear is based on, especially if you like what you hear/read

@zboblamont said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):

The cross immunity being documented suggests any subsequent variant would be rendered ineffective since the immunity imparted is for the whole virus not specific proteins.

This is obviously not a good argument, it sounds "logic" and "common sense" but has been denied by the facts. Many people got the original strain of sars-cov2 and got immunity for "the whole virus" but later got sick from Delta and/or Omicron.

The hope I think is that with the combination of widespread vaccination AND widespread Omicron circulation following an already strong circulation of the Delta variant the immunity most people will have will be based on many different strains of sars-cov2 and at least 2 of them (original through vaccination and Delta or Omicron) which have a lot of differences. So unless nasal vaccinations get widespread we will still get sick from covid when new variants emerge, but only will lighter symptoms like vaccinated people with Omicron.

But even if most doctors and epidemiologists seem very optimistic there is still a risk of a new, more virulent variant escaping this immunity, and the widespread circulation of Omicron makes it possible, as the widespread circulation of the virus has made possible the appearance of previous strains where the virus circulation was strong (Alpha in UK, Beta then Omicron in South Africa, Lambda in Peru Delta in India, ...).

I try to take any claim by any doctor with a grain of salt, especially when they refer to previous epidemic/pandemic situations as reference. Because many predicted sars-cov2 would evolve to be more contagious but less virulent, only to be proven wrong repeatedly (Alpha more contagious and as virulent, both Lambda and Delta being more contagious and much more virulent).
And for this specific doctor he made false claims about Ivermectin use and efficiency in Japan, in addition to being no virologist nor epidemiologist, so like others he is not infallible and is mostly sharing his hopes (that I share !) and guesses but it should not be taken as truth cast in stone, sars-cov2 has been very unpredictable until now...

@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):

Sadly, according to NPR news, if you have to go to the ER in Tucson, Arizona, where I grew up, you now have to wait over 200 hours before a hospital bed frees up for you. That means you're laying on a gurney in a hallway for over 8 days! Plainly an overflow condition, literally.
Worthy of note, according to some European health agencies, is that mixing and matching the vector and mRNA machines may be optimal: https://fortune.com/2021/12/07/mix-and-match-vaccines-heterologous-boosters-pfizer-moderna-jnj-astrazeneca-sputnik-ema-ecdc/ I wasn't aware of this until I specifically went looking for the info. Too much "not invented here" mentality in the US when over the summer we could have been trading Pfeizer and Moderna vaccines for sputnik vaccines and had a true win-win outcome. Compared to both Pfeizer and Moderna, Sputnik protection loses effectiveness more slowly (4x more slowly than Pfeizer and 8x more slowly than Moderena).

Yes it's been known for some time now that mixing vaccine technologies is a good way to have better immunity. No need for Sputnik it also works with AstraZeneca vaccine, and you had some in the US but never used them.
Here in Vietnam they have mostly AZ and Pfizer but for booster dose they chose the "safe and fast" version: same injection than the second dose so they are sure you won't get an allergic reaction. Not best for personal immunity but faster for mass injections as they can skip the waiting time and process more people daily.

@zboblamont said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):

His opinion is none will escape infection, but precautionary measures such as vaccinations and masks will minimise effects and help slow spread to more prevent strain on medical facilities.

Then he's joining the German health minister who declared sometime in November or December that by the end of winter people would be either vaccinated, cured or dead. Vaccinated category might be discarded now with Omicron variant, but clearly it helps staying in second category instead of the third...

@NeverDie for situations I know in other countries there are much more limitations in France where you need full vaccination (and booster shot soon) or fresh test to access most public places, and a law is being discussed to exclude the test and only allow in fully vaccinated people in malls, cinemas, any type of public show, etc etc But in the end Omicron variant started to spread in schools in December, continued in families during Christmas time and now the number of daily cases has been at 3-4 times the previous peak for over a week.
Hospital are full of covid cases, but it seems it's mostly the Delta wave (still running at the same level than in December), where Omicron cases have exploded there have been no meaningful increases in hospital admissions, which is good news.

In Vietnam the situation is much more controlled as I said before: strict border control+quarantine, with no vaccination you get basically nowhere (public places including supermarkets have a mandatory QR code scan at entrance to make sure you're vaccinated, not freshly positive or supposed to be in isolation), even if you are vaccinated you need a fresh negative covid test to take a plane for a local flight, schools have been closed for 8 months (). And here in Saigon the vaccination campaign for boosters is going full steam, I got mine 3 days ago, most people down to 30 yo had a booster shot in my district now.
Result in only a few hundred cases per day in the city, and 18 000 daily cases (peak but still low for 100 millions people) for the full country where vaccination rate is lower (but still around 80% of total population).
Just checked the number of doses administered in Saigon until yesterday and it's 18,099,453. More than 2 doses per inhabitant, while children under 12 are not vaccinated.

@chey given the same website has completely whacky stuff (like this: https://www.nutritruth.org/single-post/technological-parasitism-covid-vaccines-appear-to-contain-self-assembling-nano-octopus-microparti ) I wouldn't trust any "recipe" they share to cure anything... If you've done a few battery powered sensors you can easily realize that it would be impossible to make and then power mechanical and electronic structures small enough to go through the needle used for vaccines

And regarding HCQ:

• quinine is not the same at all, so even if the recipe proposed was really producing quinine in sufficient quantities, it wouldn't make anything acting like HCQ
• HCQ has been proved inefficient long ago by many widescale studies. Initial proponent of the drug (Didier Raoult in France) has cheated in his initial study to make it appear efficient, but without cheating it was not at all. Main cheats were 1) the only death was in the HCQ group and the patient was removed from the study for no valid reason 2) PCR tests for HCQ group were done with fewer amplification cycles (meaning they were far less likely to end up positive) and performed on different days than initially planned in the study description
• in next studies, Raoult carefully avoided to have a control group so there was no good comparison possible, he just compared results of young people (average age 40) able to stand waiting hours in front of his hospital to get tested, and result of 60+ yo admitted in critical care in other hospitals. And the most ridiculous is his hospital has no critical care unit, patients in critical condition are sent in other hospitals and die there so he never had to account for them in his statistics, the only deaths were those with health degrading too fast to be transferred.
• opposite to what is claimed in the document (which looks pretty old...), even Trump doesn't believe in it any more, and was not treated with it but with cures that had proved their efficiencies.

@NeverDie hello and happy new year ! I hope you will get well soon, but with 3 shots it should not last too long and you are safe for long term effects of covid.

In Vietnam there are a few "antivax" but they are a small minority. Especially here in Saigon where Delta hit really hard during the summer and everyone saw the overloaded hospital in Saigon, with people treated outside (filling up courts and parkings) on military beds and barely protected from tropical rain by tarpaulins, all while looking at corpses getting evacuated in plastic bags. Really terrible images, it was like a bad movie... Now 99+% of adult population in Saigon is fully vaccinated, 95+% of 12-17 yo old also and booster shots are progressing fast too with most 50+ already done.
The virus is under control at the moment with numbers falling (less than 500 new cases daily for 10 millions people), but Omicron had not spread yet due to strict border control and quarantine. It's arrived in the country though, so we will see how it spreads and if it can fill hospitals in a nearly completely vaccinated population and with nearly all fragile population having received a booster.
With nearly everyone vaccinated there is no need for prioritizing now it got under control.

In France situation is different, there is no "selection" based on covid patients vaccination status, but a lot of people with other conditions had surgeries delayed because of the Omicron wave. Around half of hospital admissions for covid are unvaccinated people (for only around 10% of unvaccinated population), and as they usually have more severe conditions and stay longer in hospital in critical care units 2/3 of people are unvaccinated. For only 10% of adult population (and an even tinier fraction in the 60+ age range) this is shockingly high.
So basically the unvaccinated are taking the beds of non-covid patients who might lose chances to survive, there are people having important surgeries like brain tumor removal delayed

The good news is that even if it now mostly fails to protect from Omicron contamination, the vaccine is very efficient against severe forms of covid, and unless you have immunodeficiency and/or very severe co morbidities you basically can't end up in hospital, in the worse case you have some traditional flu symptoms.

@NeverDie said in What's a good power bank for use with IoT?:

I was wondering the same thing, and also: do the counterfeits counterfeit the quality Chinese brands? I'm guessing so, in which case, mfalkvidd and I, not living in Asia, may not fare any better with them either.

Yes they do, they even counterfeit the websites as you can see on the vapcell link I posted above...
So no it doesn't sound like a really better option in US/Europe.